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MRS PIPER & THE SOCIETY 
FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 



MRS PIPER & THE SOCIETY 
FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

TRANSLATED & SLIGHTLY ABRIDGED 
FROM THE FRENCH OF M. SAGE 
BY NORALIE ROBERTSON WITH A 
PREFACE BY SIR OLIVER LODGE 



SCOTT-THAW CO. 

NEW YORK 
1904 



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PUBLISHER'S NOTE 

It is obvious that such a body of men, pledged to impartial 
investigation, as the Society for Psychical Research could not 
officially stand sponsor to the speculative comments of M. 
Sage, however admittedly clear-sighted and philosophical that 
French critic may be. 

But the publication of this translation has been actually 
desired and encouraged by many individuals in the Society, 
it has been revised throughout by a member of their Council, 
and it is introduced to the general reader by their President. 

The Society, indeed, is prepared to accept M. Sage's volume 
as a faithful and convenient resume of experiments conducted 
under its own auspices, and so far as it contains statements 
of fact, these statements are quoted from authoritative sources. 
For the comments, deductions or criticisms therein contained, 
the acute intellect of M. Sage is alone responsible. 

It remains only to state in detail the principles on which 
the original text has been " slightly abridged " by the trans- 
lator. No facts or comments have been left out that bear 
directly on the main subject of the book, the omissions are 
wholly of matters which might be regarded as superfluous for 
the understanding of the case of Mrs Piper. Occasionally 
paragraphs have been condensed, a tendency to vague theoris- 
ing has been checked throughout, and certain irrelevant matter 

v 



vi PUBLISHER'S NOTE 

has been altogether omitted. Such omissions are confined, 
indeed, to single sentences or paragraphs, with only the ex- 
ception of a somewhat technical discussion of the Cartesian 
philosophy in Chapter XVII. It had at first been intended 
to omit the whole of Chapter XL, as containing only fanciful 
and non-evidential matter ; but statements of this kind form 
an integral part of the communications, and so, on the whole, 
it was thought fairer to retain M. Sage's chapter on the subject, 
especially as it may be found of popular interest. 

The original appendix has been incorporated, after modifica- 
tions, in Chapter XII., since the incident here discussed was 
in progress as M. Sage wrote and has since been closed. 
His conjectures as to its possible development are naturally 
omitted. Finally all references to the Proceedings (or printed 
reports) of the Society itself have been carefully verified. In 
every case the words of the reports themselves are given in 
preference to any re-rendering of M. Sage's translations. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Preface by Sir Oliver Lodge . . xi 

Objects of the Society . . . xix 

Chapter I ...... i 

Mrs Piper's mediumship — Is mediumship a 
neurosis ? 

Chapter II . . . . . .7 

Dr Richard Hodgson — Description of the trance — 
Mrs Piper not a good hypnotic subject. 

Chapter III . . . . . .13 

Early trances — Careful first observations by 
Professor William James of Harvard University, 



Chapter IV ...... 20 

The hypothesis of fraud — The hypothesis of 
muscle-reading— " Influence." 

Chapter V ...... 27 

A sitting with Mrs Piper — The hypothesis of 
thought-transference — Incidents. 

Chapter VI ...... 39 

Phinuit — His probable origin — His character — 
What he says of himself — His French — His 
medical diagnosis — Is he merely a secondary 
personality of Mrs Piper? 
vii 



viii CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Chapter VII ...... 52 

Miss Hannah Wild's letter — The first text given 
by Phinuit — Mrs Blodgett's sitting — Thought- 
reading explains the case. 

Chapter VIII . . . . . -65 

Communications from persons having suffered 
in their mental faculties — Unexpected communi- 
cations from unknown persons — The respect due 
to the communicators — Predictions — Communica- 
tions from children. 

Chapter IX ...... 77 

Further consideration of the difficulties of the 
problem — George Pelham — Development of the 
automatic writing. 

Chapter X ...... 87 

How George Pelham has proved his identity — He 
recognises his friends and alludes to their opinions 
— He recognises objects which have belonged to 
him — Asks that certain things should be done for 
him — Very rarely makes an erroneous statement. 

Chapter XI ...... 99 

George Pelham's philosophy — The nature of the 
soul — The first moments after death — Life in the 
next world — George Pelham contradicts Stainton 
Moses — Space and time in the next world — How 
spirits see us — Means of communication. 

Chapter XII . . . . . .117 

William Stainton Moses — What George Pelham 
thinks of him — How Imperator and his assistants 
have replaced Phinuit. 

Chapter XIII . . . . . .126 

Professor Hyslop and the journalists— The so- 
called " confession " of Mrs Piper — Precautions 
taken by Professor Hyslop during his experiments 
— Impressions of the sittings. 



CONTENTS ix 

PAGE 

Chapter XIV . . . . . -134 

The communications of Mr Robert Hyslop — 
Peculiar expressions — Incidents. 

Chapter XV . . . . . .147 

The "influence" again — Other incidents — 
Statistics. 

Chapter XVI . . . . . .154 

Examination of the telepathic hypothesis — Some 
arguments which render its acceptance difficult. 

Chapter XVII ...... 161 

Some considerations which strongly support the 
spiritualistic hypothesis — Consciousness and 
character remain unchanged — Dramatic play — 
Errors and confusions. 

Chapter XVIII ...... 169 

Difficulties and objections — The identity of Im- 
perator — Vision at a distance — Triviality of the 
messages — Spiritualist philosophy — Life in the 
other world. 

Chapter XIX . . . . . .176 

The medium's return to normal life — Speeches 
made while the medium seems to hover between 
the two worlds. 

Chapter XX . . . . . .182 

Encouraging results obtained — The problem must 
be solved. 



PREFACE 



President of the Society for 
Psychical Research 

One of the facts which by general consent in the 
present stage of psychological science require study 
is the nature, and if possible the cause, of a special 
lucidity, a sensitiveness of perception, or accessibility to 
ideas appearing to arrive through channels other than 
usual organs of sense, which is sometimes met 
with among simple people 1 in a rudimentary form, 
and in a more developed form in certain exceptional 
individuals. This lucidity may perhaps be regarded 
as a modification or an exaggeration of the clearness 
of apprehension occasionally experienced by ordinary 
persons while immersed in a brown study, or while 
in the act of waking out of sleep, or when self- 
consciousness is for a time happily suspended. 

In men of genius the phenomenon occurs in the 
most dignified form at present known to us, and with 
them also it accompanies a lapse of ordinary conscious- 
ness, at least to the extent that circumstances of time 
and place and daily life become insignificant and 
trivial, or even temporarily non-existent ; but the 
notable thing is that a few persons, not of genius at 

1 Under the name " Second Sight," for instance. 
xi 



xii PREFACE 

all, are liable to an access of something not altogether 
dissimilar ; and exhibit a kind of lucidity or clairvoyant 
perceptivity, which, though doubtless of a lower grade, 
is of a well-defined and readily -investigated type, 
during that state of complete lapse of consciousness 
known to us as a specific variety of trance. 

Not that all trance patients are lucid, any more 
than all brown studies result in brilliant ideas ; nor 
should it be claimed that some measure of lucidity, even 
of the ultra-normal kind now under consideration, 
cannot exist without complete bodily trance. The 
phenomenon called "automatic writing" is an instance 
to the contrary, — when a hand liberated from ordinary 
conscious control is found, automatically as it were, to 
be writing sentences, sometimes beyond the knowledge 
of the person to whom the hand belongs. Some 
approach to unconsciousness, however, either general or 
local, seems essential to the access of the state, and 
such conditions as ordinarily induce reverie or sleep 
are suitable for bringing it on ; no one, for instance, 
would expect to experience it while urgently- occupied 
in affairs. Whether it is desirable to give way to so 
unpractical an attitude, and to encourage the influx of 
ideas through non-sensory channels, is another question 
which need not now concern - us. It suffices for us 
that the phenomenon exists, and that it occasionally 
though very rarely takes on so well marked and 
persistent a form as to lend itself to experimental 
investigation. It is true that in these cases nothing 
of exceptional and world-compelling merit is produced ; 
the substance of the communication is often, though 
not always, commonplace, and the form sometimes 
grotesque. It is true also that a complete record of a 



PREFACE xiii 

conversation held under these circumstances — perhaps 
a full record of a commonplace conversation held under 
any circmnstances — readily lends itself to cheap ridicule ; 
nevertheless, the evidence of intimate knowledge thus 
displayed becomes often of extreme interest to the few 
persons for whom the disjointed utterances have a 
personal meaning, although to the outsider they must 
appear dull, unless he is of opinion that they help him 
to interpret the more obscure workings of the human 
mind, or unless he thinks it possible that the nature 
and meaning of inspiration in general may become 
better understood by a study of this, its lowest, but at 
the same time its most definite and controllable, form. 
Undoubtedly information is attainable under these 
conditions from sources unknown, undoubtedly the 
entranced or semi-conscious body or part of a body 
has become a vehicle or medium for ostensible messages 
from other intelligences, or for impersonations ; but the 
cause of the lucidity so exhibited, the nature of the 
channel by which the information is obtained, and the 
source of the information itself, are questions which, 
although they are apt to be treated glibly by a super- 
ficial critic, to whom they appear the most salient 
feature and the easiest of explanation, are really the 
most difficult of all. 

It was to study such questions as this that a special 
society — the Society for Psychical Research — was 
founded some twenty-two years ago. 

Perhaps the most remarkable, and certainly the 
most thorough, of all the investigations made under 
the auspcies of this Society has been the case of the 
American lady, Mrs Piper ; which, begun in 1887, has 
continued ever since, with only such intervals as were 



xiv PREFACE 

necessitated by the circumstances of the case. She 
was already known to the Professor of Psychology at 
Harvard and to some other American savants, but she 
was brought to the notice of the leaders of the English 
Society by Dr Richard Hodgson, who has been for 
some years, and is still, acting as its representative in 
America, and Secretary of its American Branch. A 
complete record of the whole investigation has not yet 
been published, but large portions of it have appeared 
from time to time in the Proceedings of the Society. 

It is not to be supposed that the case is unique by 
any means ; on the contrary, it may in some senses be 
regarded as typical, but its features are exceptionally 
well marked, and the record has been more carefully 
and continuously kept than that of any other case. 
Accordingly, some emphasis has been given to it, and 
a general vague notion concerning the case has diffused 
itself among educated persons beyond the limits of the 
Society. 

And indeed it is one of really general interest, 
since the hypothesis of fraud is entirely inapplicable 
to it, and in the opinion of the most sceptical critics 
who have made an adequate study of the case, no 
explanation more commonplace than that of telepathy 
will bear examination. Other critics — and these are 
they who have gone into the matter most thoroughly — 
find the hypothesis of telepathy to be insufficient, and hold 
thai some further explanation is necessary. Opinions 
differ as to what that further explanation may be, 
and so far as I know it has not been scientifically 
formulated as yet. To me it appears probable that 
no one explanation will fit all the facts, and that the 
subject is not yet ripe for theory. Working hypotheses 



PREFACE xv 

must be made, must be tested, and in all probability 
must be rejected, but our main duty at the present 
stage is the careful examination and record of facts. 
The working hypothesis most widely prevalent among 
the general public, whether for the purpose of scoffing 
or for a foundation of belief, is some crude form of 
the idea that the persistent intelligence of persons who 
have severed their connection with matter is willing^ 
and occasionally even anxious, to take up temporarily 
the broken thread, and so to operate as to transmit^ 
through any channel which may be open, to us who 
are still associated with planetary matter, messages 
which shall serve as a sign of their continued exist- 
ence and affection ; and that the biological organism 
or part of an organism of a living but unconscious 
or semi-conscious person is an instrument which may, 
though with difficulty, be utilised to that end. 

It is easy to express this hypothesis in such a way 
that it is repugnant to common sense. It may be 
possible hereafter to formulate it so that it shall corre- 
spond in some measure with the truth. But even though 
it should turn out that intelligences can exist apart 
from the surface of planets and the usual material con- 
comitants, it by no means follows that they must all 
at some period have been incarnate on the earth. The 
recognition of modes of existence differing greatly from 
our own, if it can ever be properly effected, will have 
an illuminating bearing on wiany fundamental problems 
of life and death ; but this is not the place to attempt 
to discuss such a question, even if the time were ripe 
for the discussion at all. 

The Society for Psychical Research, though it has 
now for some time studied this among other questions, 



xvi PREFACE 

has arrived at no sort of agreement concerning it; 
the only fact on which its members are generally 
agreed is as to the reality of some kind of telepathy, 
an apparently direct influence between mind and mind ; 
and telepathy is no doubt an important fact, but it 
by no means follows that it is a master-key capable 
of furnishing the solution of every variety of psychical 
problem. The chief work of the Society has not been 
the construction of theories ; it has accumulated and 
sifted a mass of evidence dealing with ultra-normal 
human faculty, it has published much material and 
criticism in its Proceedings, has printed more in its 
private fournal, and its members have written books. 
To these accessible sources of information students can 
be referred. 

But it is necessary to get some inkling of a subject 
before becoming a student of it — people have not time 
to read a tithe of what is printed ; and inasmuch as 
many erroneous notions and misconceptions are pre- 
valent, even among educated persons, concerning the 
method and motives of the Society, as well as concern- 
ing its ascertained results, it .occurred to the Council 
that perhaps a more popular account of the outline of 
some of the facts, with abridged examples or illustra- 
tions of some of the details, might be of service in 
spreading the rudiments of a wider knowledge con- 
cerning at least one branch of a subject which must 
certainly be of interest to the human race when it is 
rightly apprehended. 

A popular statement was perhaps the more desir- 
able since a number of insignificant bodies have 
recently sprung up, showing considerable energy in the 
business of advertisement, assuming colourable imita- 



PREFACE xvii 

tions of our Society's designation, but having very 
different objects — unscientific always, sometimes frankly 
pecuniary — so that it was quite likely that a certain 
amount of confusion might occur. 

The idea of the Council, in the first instance, was 
to have a short popular account or summary of the 
Piper case specially written by one of their own members ; 
but it was brought to their notice that a French 
writer had already issued a small book of a character 
not very different from that contemplated, and had 
steered his way cleverly through the intricacies of a 
subject bristling with difficulty below the surface and 
choked with detail throughout ; so it was thought best 
to utilise the skilful work of the French writer, and 
simply see to it that a faithful translation was made, 
only introducing changes in the direction of still further 
abbreviation occasionally. 

This is the book for which I consented, though I 
admit with some misgivings, to write a preface when 
it was ready to appear ; and now that I see it in its 
English dress I find my misgivings justified. 

The author speaks deprecatingly of his purpose in writ- 
ing it, describing it as " un modeste ouvrage de 
vulgarisation," and thereby disarms criticism, for, con- 
sidered from this point of view, it is successful ; but I 
must guard not only myself but all other members of 
the Council of the S.P.R. from any endorsement of 
the sentiments and comments which M. Sage scatters 
somewhat liberally through his pages. Taken as they 
were intended in the original, they were not out of 
keeping ; they seemed to harmonise with the general 
tone and formed part of a consistent artistic scheme. 
Translated they appear less appropriate, but to omit 

A* 



xviii PREFACE 

them altogether would be to give the book a different 
character, and probably to spoil it. As it stands, it is 
readable, more readable than a profounder treatise 
would be. Let it pass, therefore, as conveying to readers 
who have neither time nor inclination to enter upon a 
detailed study some conception of the most remarkable 
modern instance of the phenomenon to which I began 
by referring — a phenomenon of which a better, but by 
no means yet a complete or final, treatment can be 
studied in the work of Mr Myers called Human 
Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. 

OLIVER LODGE. 



OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY 

The Society for Psychical Research was founded at 

the beginning of 1882, for the purpose of making 

an organised and systematic attempt to investigate 

various sorts of debatable phenomena which are 

prima facie inexplicable on any generally recognised 

hypothesis. From the recorded testimony of many 

competent witnesses, past and present, including 

observations recently made by scientific men of 

eminence in various countries, there appeared to be, 

amidst much illusion and deception, an important 

body of facts to which this description would apply, 

and which therefore, if incontestably established, 

would be of the very highest interest. The task of 

examining such residual phenomena had often been 

undertaken by individual effort, but never hitherto 

by a scientific society organised on a sufficiently 

broad basis. The following are the principal 

departments of work which the Society at present 

undertakes : — 

1. An examination of the nature and extent 

of any influence which may be exerted 

by one mind upon another, otherwise 
xix 



xx OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY 

than through the recognised sensory 
channels. 

2. The study of hypnotism and mesmerism ; and 

an inquiry into the alleged phenomena 
of clairvoyance. 

3. A careful investigation of any reports, resting 

on testimony sufficiently strong and not 
too remote, of apparitions coinciding 
with some external event (as for instance 
a death) or giving information previously 
unknown to the percipient, or being seen 
by two or more persons independently of 
each other. 

4. An inquiry into various alleged phenomena 

apparently inexplicable by known laws 
of nature, and commonly referred by 
Spiritualists to the agency of extra- 
human intelligences. 

5. The collection and collation of existing 

materials bearing on the history of these 

subjects. 
The aim of the Society is to approach these 
various problems without prejudice or prepossession 
of any kind, and in the same spirit of exact and 
unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled Science to 
solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor 
less hotly debated. The founders of the Society 
have always fully recognised the exceptional 
difficulties which surround this branch of research; 



OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY xxi 

but they nevertheless believe that by patient and 
systematic effort some results of permanent value 
may be attained. 

Investigating Committees (with the exception of 
the Committee for Experiments) are not appointed 
by the Council ; but any group of Members and 
Associates may become an investigating Committee ; 
and every such Committee will, it is hoped, appoint 
an Honorary Secretary, and through him report 
its proceedings to the Council from time to time. 

The Council, if it accepts a report so made for 
presentation to the Society, will be prepared to 
consider favourably any application on the part 
of the Committee for funds to assist in defraying the 
expenses of special experimental investigation. 

The Council will also be glad to receive reports 
of investigation from individual Members or 
Associates, or from persons unconnected with the 
Society. 1 

Any such report, or any other communication 
relating to the work of the Society, should be 
addressed to Miss Alice Johnson (as Editor 
of the Proceedings and Journal)^ 20 Hanover 
Square, London, W., or to J. G. Piddington, Esq., 
8? Sloane Street, London, S.W. ; or in America 

? 

1 Any reports or papers which may be printed in the Proceedings 
will become the Society's property; but author or authors will be 
entitled to receive 50 copies of any such report or paper gratis, and 
additional copies, if required, at a small charge. 

b 



xxii OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY 

to Dr Richard Hodgson, 5 Boylston Place, Boston 
Mass. 

Meetings of the Society, for the reading and 
discussion of papers, are held periodically ; and the 
papers then produced, with other matter, are, as a 
general rule, afterwards published in the Proceedings. 

The Proceedings of the Society may be 
obtained directly from the Secretary, 20 Hanover 
Square, London, W., or from the Secretary of the 
American Branch, or from any bookseller, through 
Mr R. Brimley Johnson, 4 Adam Street, Adelphi, 
London, W.C. 

A Monthly Journal (from October to July 
inclusive) is also issued to Members and Associates. 
The Journal contains evidence freshly received in 
different branches of the inquiry, which is thus 
rendered available for consideration, and for dis- 
cussion by correspondence, before selections from 
it are put forward in a more public manner. 

The Council, in inviting the adhesion of Members, 
think it desirable to quote a preliminary Note, which 
appeared on the first page of the Constitution of 
the original Society, and which still holds good. 

" Note. — To prevent misconception, it is here 
expressly stated that Membership of the 
Society does not imply the acceptance 
of any particular explanation of the 
phenomena investigated, nor any belief 
as to the operation, in the physical world, 



OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY xxiii 

of forces other than those recognised by 
Physical Science." 

Conditions of Membership. 
The conditions of Membership are thus defined 
in Articles 11-18 : — 

The Society shall consist of: (a) Members, who 
shall subscribe two guineas annually, 
or make a single payment of twenty 
guineas. (J?) Associates, who shall sub- 
scribe one guinea annually, or make a 
single payment of ten guineas. 

All Members and Associates of the Society 
shall be elected by the Council. Every 
candidate for admission shall be required 
to give such references as shall be 
approved by the Council, and shall be 
proposed in writing by two or more 
Members or Associates. 

All subscriptions shall become payable im- 
mediately upon election, and subsequently 
on the first day of January in each year. 
In the case of any Member or Associate 
elected on or after the 1st October, his 
subscription shall be accepted as for the 
next following year. 

Article 22 provides that if any Member or 
Associate desire to resign, he shall give 
written notice thereof to the Secretary. 
He shall, however, be liable for all 



xxiv OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY 

subscriptions which shall then remain 
unpaid. 
Ladies are eligible either as Members or 
Associates. 

Privileges of Membership. 

Articles 19 and 20 provide that Members and 
Associates are eligible to any of the offices of the 
Society, and are entitled to the free receipt both of 
the Proceedings and of the Journal^ to the use of 
Library books in the Society's rooms, and to attend 
all the General Meetings of the Society, to which 
they are also allowed to invite friends. They are 
further entitled to purchase the Proceedings of the 
Society issued previous to their joining it, — and also 
additional copies of any Part or Volume, — at half 
their published price. 

Members have the additional privileges of borrow- 
ing books from the Library, and of voting in the 
election of the Council, and at all meetings of the 
Society. 

A contents sheet of the whole series of Proceed- 
ings may be had on application to the Secretary, 20 
Hanover Square, London, W. 



Mrs Piper 

AND THE 

Society for Psychical Research 

CHAPTER I 

Mrs Piper's mediumship — Is mediumship a neurosis ? 

Mrs Piper is what the spiritualists call a medium, 
and what the English psychologists call an auto- 
matist, which is to say, a person who appears at 
times to lend her organism to beings imperceptible 
to our senses, in order to enable them to manifest 
themselves to us. I say that it appears to be thus, 
not that it is so. It is difficult for many reasons to 
admit the existence of these problematical beings. 
We shall deny it or remain sceptical till the day 
comes when the evidence proves too strong for us. 
Mrs Piper's mediumship is one of the most perfect 
which has ever been discovered. In any case, it is 
the one which has been the most perseveringly, 
lengthily and carefully studied by highly com- 
petent men. Members of the Society for Psychical 
Research have studied the phenomena presented by 

A 



2 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

Mrs Piper during fifteen consecutive years. They 
have taken all the precautions necessitated by the 
strangeness of the case, the circumstances, and the 
surrounding scepticism ; they have faced and minutely 
weighed all hypotheses. In future the most orthodox 
psychologists will be unable to ignore these phe- 
nomena when constructing their systems; they will 
be compelled to examine them and find an explana- 
tion for them, which their preconceived ideas will 
sometimes render it difficult to do. 

Praise and warm gratitude are due to the men who 
have studied the case of Mrs Piper. But we owe no 
less to Mrs Piper, who has lent herself to the investi- 
gations with perfect good faith and pliability. None 
of those who have had any continued intercourse 
with her have a shadow of doubt of her sincerity. 
She has not taken the view that she was exercising 
a new kind of priesthood; she has understood that 
she was an interesting anomaly for science, and she 
has allowed science to study her. A vulgar soul 
would not have done this. Her example, and also 
that of Mile. Smith, of whom Professor Flournoy 
has lately written, 1 deserve to be followed. If 
the strange phenomena of mediumship have not 
yet been sufficiently studied by as many persons as 
could be wished, scientific men are chiefly to blame 
for the fact. Many of them regard with disfavour 
facts which upset painfully-erected systems on which 
they have relied for years. But the mediums are 
also to blame, for their vanity is sometimes great, 
and their sincerity frequently doubtful. 

1 Des hides a la Planete Mars ; etude sttr tin cas de somnambulisme, 
by Th. Flournoy. Pub. Alcan, Paris. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 3 

Mrs Piper is American. Her husband is employed 
in a large shop in Boston. Although of a home- 
loving disposition, Mrs Piper has travelled ; she has 
several times consented to leave her ordinary sur- 
roundings in order to prevent all suspicion of fraud ; 
she has given sittings in New York and other places, 
and has paid a three months' visit to England. 

Her education does not appear to have been 
carried very far. She has doubtless read much, 
like all American women, but without method, 
and probably very superficially. Her language 
is commonplace, sometimes even trivial, but the 
records do not give me the impression that she is 
really trivial-minded ; language may be trivial when 
ideas are not. On the whole, Mrs Piper's person- 
ality is attractive. 

The point which naturally interests the man of 
science, and particularly the doctor, is the state of 
health and the morbid heredity of Mrs Piper. We 
have very insufficient information about these. I 
can find no circumstantial report on this important 
matter anywhere. Mrs Piper was rather seriously 
ill in 1890; a doctor attended her for several con- 
secutive months ; this gentleman was also present 
at a sitting she gave on the 4th December of this 
same year, 1890. It is evident that he was in a 
position to study Mrs Piper closely. Dr Hodgson 
asked him for a report, which would have been 
appended to the other documents. But this doctor 
had the wisdom of the serpent. He promised, 
but changed his mind, and absolutely refused to 
furnish any report whatever. Dr Hodgson asked 
the subject a series of questions with the object of 



4 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

ascertaining the state of health of her immediate 
ancestors, particularly from the neuropathic point 
of view. She belongs to a family which appears to 
have been very healthy and not in any way subject 
to nervous maladies. 

Mrs Piper's own general state of health is even 
more interesting to our inquiry than that of her 
ancestors, since most doctors persist in seeing in 
mediumship a neurosis, sister or cousin to hysteria or 
epilepsy. 

It is undeniable that many mediums present some 
physiological peculiarity or other. Eusapia Paladino, 
for example, has a depression of the left parietal 
bone. But, on the other hand, Mile. Smith of Geneva, 
who has been studied by Professor Flournoy, seems 
to enjoy health as good as anybody's — even flourish- 
ing health. Perhaps, if a thorough search were made, 
some defect might be discovered, but the person who 
should not betray some inherited peculiarity pro- 
bably could not be found. 

As far as Mrs Piper is concerned, she seems to 
have enjoyed irreproachable health till towards 1882 
or 1883. The exact date is not stated. About that 
time she suffered from a tumour, caused by a blow 
from a sledge, and she feared cancer. This illness 
brought about the discovery of her mediumship. 
Up to this time absolutely nothing abnormal had 
occurred to her. Her husband's parents had had, in 
1884, a sitting with a medium which had much 
impressed them. They frequently advised their 
daughter-in-law to take the advice of some medium 
who gave medical consultations. To please them, 
she went to a blind medium named J. R. Cocke, 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 5 

and there she had her first loss of consciousness or 
" trance." But we shall return to this. 

It is to be concluded that the prescription of the 
medium had no more influence on the disease than 
those of ordinary doctors, for this tumour continued 
to make Mrs Piper's health rather precarious for a long 
time. She only decided in 1893 to undergo a surgical 
operation — laparotomy. No complications resulted 
from it, and her convalescence was rapid. However, 
in 1895, the after-effect of this operation was a serious 
hernia, which necessitated a second operation in 
February 1896. She only recovered thoroughly in 
October of the same year. 

Many persons will be disposed to believe that 
Mrs Piper's tumour is the explanation of her medium- 
ship, particularly as the mediumship only appeared 
after the tumour. It is rather difficult to prove 
them wrong. There is, however, a fact which seems 
to indicate that they would be mistaken. When Mrs 
Piper is ill, her mediumship decreases or becomes less 
lucid ; she only furnishes incoherent, fragmentary, 
or quite false communications. The syncope or 
"trance," which is easy when she is well, becomes 
difficult or even impossible when she is ill. Her 
health has been good since her last operation, the 
syncopes are easy, and the communications obtained 
in this state have acquired a degree of coherence and 
plausibility which was previously wanting. 

If, then, Mrs Piper's mediumship was the result of 
illness, it is strange that her recovery should have 
favoured the development and perfecting of this 
same mediumship. There appears to be a contra- 
diction here. I am not competent regarding the 



6 MRS PIPER 

question, but, on examining the facts, I can hardly 
believe that mediumship is a mere neurosis. After 
all, are there not famous men of science who declare 
that genius itself is only a neurosis ? In their eyes 
the bandit is only a sick man ; but the genius also is 
only a sick man. 

If it is true that the best and worst in humanity 
are only opposite faces of the same medal, we should 
be tempted to think mankind even more pitiable than 
we have hitherto believed. 



CHAPTER II 

Dr Richard Hodgson — Description of the trance — Mrs Piper 
not a good hypnotic subject. 

Before proceeding further, I must ask my readers' 
permission to introduce Dr Hodgson, the man who 
has studied Mrs Piper's case with the greatest care and 
with the most perseverance. Dr Richard Hodgson 
went to America expressly to observe this medium, 
and during some fifteen years he has, so to say, 
hardly lost sight of her for a moment. All the per- 
sons who have had sittings for a long time past have 
passed through his hands ; he introduces them by 
assumed names, and takes all. possible precautions 
that Mrs Piper, in her normal state, shall not obtain 
any information about them. These precautions are 
now superfluous. Mrs Piper has never had recourse 
to fraud, and everyone is thoroughly convinced of 
the fact. But the slightest relaxation of supervision 
would lay the most decisive experiments open to 
suspicion. 

Dr Hodgson is one of the earliest workers for the 
Society for Psychical Research. He has been a 
terrible enemy to fraud all his life. At the time 
of the formation of the Society, Mme. Blavatsky, 
foundress of the Theosophical Society, was making 
herself much talked about. The most extraordinary 

7 



8 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

phenomena were supposed to have occurred at the 
Theosophical Society's headquarters in India. Dr 
Hodgson was sent there to study them impartially. 
He quickly made the discovery that the whole affair 
was charlatanry and sleight-of-hand. On his return 
to England he wrote a report — which has not killed 
Theosophy, because even new-born religions have 
strong vitality — but which has discredited this doc- 
trine for ever in the eyes of thoughtful people. 

After this master stroke, Dr Hodgson continued to 
hunt down fraudulent mediums. He learned all their 
tricks, and acquired a conjurer's skill. It was he 
again who discovered the unconscious 1 frauds of 
Eusapia Paladino during the sittings which this 
Italian medium gave at Cambridge. When such a 
man, after long study of Mrs Piper's phenomena, 
affirms their validity, we may believe him. He is 
not credulous, nor an enthusiast, nor a mystic. I 
have written of him somewhat at length, because, by 
force of circumstances, his name will often appear in 
these pages. 

To return to Mrs Piper and the phenomena which 
specially interest us. Mrs Piper falls into trance 
spontaneously, without the intervention of any mag- 
netiser. I shall explain later, at length, what must 
be understood by " trance." 

Professor Charles Richet was one of the persons 
who had a sitting with our medium while she was 

1 In the opinion of the chief witnesses of the Cambridge sittings the 
frauds of Eusapia Paladino were not unconscious. Mr Myers said, in 
the report to the Society immediately after the sittings : — " I cannot 
doubt that we observed much conscious and deliberate fraud , of a kind 
which must have needed long practice to bring it to its present level of 
skill." — Journal of 'Society for Psychical ' Research for 1895, p. 133, Trans. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 9 

staying at Cambridge. He describes the trance in 
these terms : — 

" She is obliged to hold someone's hand in order 
to go into a trance. She holds the hand several 
minutes, silently, in half-darkness. After some time 
— from five to fifteen minutes — she is seized with 
slight spasmodic convulsions, which increase, and 
terminate in a very slight epileptiform attack. Pass- 
ing out of this, she falls into a state of stupor, with 
somewhat stertorous breathing ; this lasts about a 
minute or two ; then, all at once, she comes out of 
the stupor with a burst of words. Her voice is 
changed; she is no longer Mrs Piper, but another 
personage, Dr Phinuit, who speaks in a loud, mascu- 
line voice in a mingling of negro patois, French, and 
American dialect." 

Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., well-known among Eng- 
lish men of science, and at the time Professor of 
Physics at Liverpool, describes the opening of the 
trance in very nearly the same words as Professor 
Richet in the remarkable report which he published in 
1890 on the sittings he had with Mrs Piper. He also 
notices the slight epileptiform attack, although he 
adds that he is not " pretending to speak medically." * 

The Phinuit personality, of which Professor Richet 
speaks in the passage above quoted, is what the 
Spiritualists call a " control." By " control " is meant 
the mysterious being who is supposed to have tem- 
porarily taken possession of the organism of the 
medium. Are these controls only secondary per- 
sonalities, or are they, as they themselves declare, 
disincarnated human spirits, spirits of dead men who 

1 Proc. of the S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 444. 



io MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

come back to communicate with us by using an en- 
tranced organism as a machine? In either case they 
must have a name. Phinuit has been one of Mrs 
Piper's principal controls, but he is far from having 
been the only one. On the contrary, they have been 
legion, and, what is strange, these controls appear to 
be personalities as distinct from each other as pos- 
sible, each with his own style of language, his belief, 
his opinions, his tricks of speech or manner. 

Mrs Piper's trance has changed its aspect a little 
with the development and perfecting of her medium- 
ship. Formerly the controls communicated only by 
using her voice ; then some of them began to write 
In some of the sittings one personality communicated 
through the voice, while another, entirely different, and 
speaking of utterly different matters, communicated 
simultaneously in writing. For some years now the 
controls have only communicated in writing, and have 
used the right hand only. The right arm of the 
medium is in lively movement, while the rest of her 
body lies inert, leaning forward upon cushions. 

In a long report which has just appeared, 1 Mr James 
Hyslop, Professor of Logic and Ethics at the Univer- 
sity of Columbia, in the State of New York, describes 
the beginning of the trance in detail as it now takes 
place. At the first sitting he had with Mrs Piper he 
seated himself more than a yard from her, in a posi- 
tion which enabled him to observe attentively all that 
happened. 

The medium remained quietly seated in an arm- 
chair for three or four minutes. Then her head shook 
and her right eyebrow twitched ; all this time she was 

l Proc. ofS.P.R., vol. xvi. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH it 

trimming her nails. She then leant forward on the 
cushions which had been placed on the table for her 
head to rest upon, and closed and rubbed her eyes ; 
her face was slightly congested for some instants. 
She opened her eyes again, and the ocular globes 
were visible, slightly upturned ; she blew her nose, 
and began to attend to her nails again. Her gaze 
became slightly fixed. Her face once more changed ; 
the redness disappeared, and she grew slightly pale. 
The muscles relaxed, the mouth was a little drawn 
on one side, and the stare became more fixed. Finally 
her mouth opened and the trance came on gently, 
like a fainting fit, without struggle. Then Dr Hodg- 
son arranged her head on the cushions with her right 
cheek on her left hand, so that her face was turned to 
the left, and she was unable to see her right hand, 
which soon began to write automatically. 

During the trance the sensibility of Mrs Piper's 
organism to exterior excitation is much blunted. If 
her arm is pricked, even severely, it is withdrawn but 
slowly ; if a bottle of ammonia is put to her nostrils, 
and care is taken that it is inhaled, her head does not 
betray sensation by the least movement. One day, 
if I am not mistaken, Dr Hodgson put a lighted 
match to her arm, and asked Phinuit if he felt it. 1 

"Yes," replied Phinuit, "but not much, you know. 
What is it ? Something cold, isn't it ? " 

These and numerous other experiments show that 
if sensibility is not abolished, it is at least very much 
blunted. 

It might be concluded from the above that Mrs 
Piper would be an excellent hypnotic subject. She 

l Proc ofS.P.R., vol. viii. p. 5. 



12 MRS PIPER 

is nothing of the kind. Without being precisely re- 
fractory to hypnotism, she is only an indifferently 
good hypnotic subject. Professor William James of 
Harvard has made experiments to elucidate this point. 
His two first attempts to hypnotise Mrs Piper were 
entirely fruitless. Between the second and third, 
Professor William James asked Phinuit, during a 
mediumistic trance, to be kind enough to help him to 
make the subject hypnotisable. Phinuit promised ; 
in fact, he always promises all that is asked. At the 
third attempt Mrs Piper fell slightly asleep, but only 
at the fifth sitting was there a real hypnotic sleep, 
accompanied by the usual automatic and muscular 
phenomena. But it was impossible to obtain any- 
thing more. Hypnosis and trance, in Mrs Piper, have 
no points of resemblance. In the trance, muscular 
mobility is extreme. In hypnosis, just the contrary 
is the case. If she is ordered during hypnosis to re- 
member what she has said or done, she remembers. 
During the trance, the control has more than once 
been asked to arrange that Mrs Piper should recall, 
on waking, what she had said ; but this has never 
succeeded. During the mediumistic trance she seems 
to read the deepest recesses of the souls of those pre- 
sent like a book. During hypnosis there is no trace 
of this thought-reading. In short, the mediumistic 
trance and the hypnotic sleep are not one and the 
same thing. Whatever may be the real nature of the 
difference, this difference is so great that it strikes the 
least attentive observer at once. 



CHAPTER III 

Early trances — Careful first observations by Professor William 
James of Harvard University, Massachusetts, U.S.A. 

I HAVE already explained on what occasion Mrs 
Piper had her first trance. Suffering from a traumatic 
tumour, she had gone to ask advice of a blind medium 
named Cocke. This medium gave medical consulta- 
tions, but he also asserted that he had the power of 
developing latent mediumship. At this first sitting 
Mrs Piper felt very strange thrills, and thought she 
was going to faint. At the following sitting Mr 
Cocke put his hands on her head. She felt at once 
that she was on the point of losing consciousness. 
She saw a flood of light, as well as unrecognised 
human faces, and a hand which fluttered before her 
face. She does not remember what happened after- 
wards. But when she woke she was told that a young 
Indian girl named Chlorine had manifested through 
her organism, and had given a remarkable proof of 
survival after death to a person who happened to be 
present. 

Mrs Piper was therefore really a medium. Her 
personal friends immediately began to arrange sit- 
tings with her. Little by little strangers were ad- 

13 



14 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

mitted to this private circle. Various self-styled 
spirits communicated by her means in the earlier 
days. Phinuit, who later took almost sole possession 
of Mrs Piper's organism, was far from being alone at 
first; his place was disputed. The first controls, if 
they themselves are to be believed, were the actress 
Mrs Siddons, the musician John Sebastian Bach, the 
poet Longfellow, Commodore Vanderbilt the multi- 
millionaire, and a young Italian girl named Loretta 
Ponchini. 

At the outset Dr Phinuit, when he appeared, con- 
fined himself to diagnosing and giving medical advice. 
He thought everything else beneath him. 

At last, one evening, John Sebastian Bach an- 
nounced that he and all his companions were about 
to concentrate their power on Dr Phinuit, and make 
him the principal control. Naturally we do not know 
what they did, but it is certain that from that time 
Dr Phinuit became so much the principal control 
that he had almost sole possession of Mrs Piper's 
organism for years. As we shall see, he ceased, to 
confine himself to giving medical consultations. He 
willingly replied to all questions addressed to him, 
and he even talked readily on all sorts of subjects 
without being questioned at all. 

The first person of educated intelligence who had 
an opportunity to examine and study, although some- 
what summarily, Mrs Piper's trance phenomena, was 
Professor William James of Harvard University 
In 1886 he made a brief report of them, which he 
published in the Proceedings of the American Society 
for Psychical Research. Professor James did not at 
first recognise all the importance of the Piper case. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 15 

No shorthand report of the sittings was made, and he 
did not even take complete notes. However, he 
assured himself that fraud had nothing to do with 
the phenomena, but without taking all the minute 
precautions which others have since taken. He satis- 
fied himself that here was an interesting mystery, 
and says so in his report, but he left the charge of 
looking for the key to others. But I shall give an 
account of the sittings of Professor James, in the first 
place because it would be improper to neglect even 
the superficial studies of a man of such eminence, and 
secondly, because they will give my readers a clear 
idea of the phenomena. 1 

Professor James made Mrs Piper's acquaintance in 
the autumn of 1885 in the following way. His 
mother-in-law, Mrs Gibbens, had heard a friend 
speak of Mrs Piper, and as she had never seen a 
medium, she asked for a sitting out of curiosity. 
Mrs Gibbens, who went sceptical, returned rather 
impressed. She had heard a number of private de- 
tails which she believed were unknown outside her 
family. On the day following Professor James's 
sister-in-law went in her turn to see Mrs Piper, and 
obtained even better results than her mother. For 
example, the inquirer had placed a letter in Italian 
on the medium's forehead. It must be observed that 
Mrs Piper is entirely ignorant of that language. 
Nevertheless, Phinuit gave a number of perfectly 
correct details about the writer of the letter. The 
mystery became interesting, as the young Italian 
who had written it was only known to two people in 
the whole United States. Later on, at other sittings, 

1 Proc. o'S.P.P., vol. vi. p. 651. 



16 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

Phinuit gave the exact name of this young man, 
which he had been unable to do at first. 

Professor James's attitude when these facts were 
related to him can be imagined. He did what most 
of us do, or have done. He played the esprit 
fort y joked his relatives about their credulity, and 
thought that women were decidedly deficient in 
critical spirit. His curiosity was none the less 
awakened. Some days after, in the company of his 
wife, and having taken all possible precautions that 
Mrs Piper should not know his name or intentions 
beforehand, he went and asked her for a sitting. In- 
timate details, principally about Mrs James's family, 
were repeated. Others even more circumstantial were 
given. What was the least easily obtained was just 
what could have been learned with the greatest 
facility if Mrs Piper had acquired these details 
fraudulently or by normal means, namely, proper 
names. Professor James was the first to notice a 
fact which a large number of observers have since 
remarked. The impression that the names are 
shouted to Phinuit by a spirit is unavoidable. 
Phinuit, who is to transmit them, hears imperfectly, 
doubtless on account of his position, which all the 
controls describe as very uncomfortable and painful 
— the organism of the medium seems to plunge the 
controls into a semi-somnolence. 

Thus Phinuit mangles the names he repeats. It 
appears that the communicating spirit is conscious of 
this and corrects. Phinuit repeats the name thus 
several times, and very often only succeeds in 
giving it exactly after several attempts. It even some- 
time happens that a name cannot be given all at 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 17 

a sitting, but then it is generally given at a subse- 
quent one. 

Thus, at this first sitting of Professor James, the 
name of his father-in-law, Gibbens, was first given as 
Niblin, and then as Giblin. Professor James had lost 
a child a year before. He was mentioned, and his 
name, Herman > was given as Herrin. But the details 
which accompanied the enunciation of the name pre- 
vented mistake, on the part of the sitters, about the 
person intended. 

Professor James brought away from this first sitting 
the conclusion that unless Mrs Piper, by some chance 
inexplicable to him, knew his own and his wife's 
families intimately, she must be possessed of super- 
normal powers. In short, his first scepticism was 
shaken, and he had twelve further sittings with Mrs 
Piper in the course of the winter. Moreover, he ob- 
tained circumstantial details from relatives and friends 
who likewise had sittings. 

The following are some examples of Phinuit's clair- 
voyance. 1 

Professor James's mother-in-law had, on her return 
from Europe, lost her bank-book. At a sitting held 
soon afterwards Phinuit was asked if he could help 
her to find it. He told her exactly where it was, and 
there it was found. 

At another sitting, Phinuit said to Professor James, 
who this time was not accompanied by Mrs James, 
" Your child has a boy named Robert F. as a 
playfellow in our world." The Fs. were cousins of 
Mrs James, who lived in a distant town. 

On returning home Professor James said to his 

1 Proc. of S. P.P., vol. vi. p. 657. 
B 



18 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

wife, " Your cousins the Fs. have lost a child, 
haven't they ? But Phinuit made a mistake about 
the sex ; he said it was a boy." Mrs James confirmed 
the perfect exactness of Phinuit's information ; her 
husband had been wrong. 

At the second sitting which Mrs Gibbens had she 
was told among other things that one of her daughters, 
mentioned by name, had at the time a bad pain in 
her back, to which she was by no means subject. 
The detail was found to be exact. 

On another occasion Phinuit announced to Mrs 
James and her brother, before the arrival of any tele- 
gram, the death of their aunt, which had just occurred 
in New York. It is true that this death was mo- 
mentarily expected. 

At another sitting Phinuit said to Professor James, 
" You have just killed a grey and white cat with 
ether. The wretched animal spun round and round 
a long time before dying." This was quite true. 

Phinuit, again, told Mrs James that her aunt in 
New York, the one whose death he had announced, 
had written her a letter warning her against all kinds 
of mediums. And he sketched the old lady's char- 
acter, not very respectfully, in a most amusing way. 

I quote these examples to give an idea of the kind 
of information furnished by Mrs Piper's controls. 
But it must not be believed that this is all. The con- 
trols do not need to be entreated to speak. Phinuit 
is particularly loquacious, and he often talks for an 
hour on end. His remarks are frequently incoherent, 
and often also obviously false. But, at the very least, 
in the good sittings, truthfulness and exactitude much 
preponderate, whatever may be the source from which 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 19 

Phinuit obtains his facts ; whether he gets them from 
disincarnated spirits, as he asserts ; whether he reads 
them in the consciousness or sub-consciousness of the 
sitter, or whether they are furnished him by what 
he calls the "influence" which the persons to whom 
the objects presented to him belonged have left upon 
them. 

I have forgotten to say that Phinuit asks to have 
brought to him objects of some sort which have be- 
longed to the persons about whom he is consulted. 
He feels the objects, and says at once, " I feel the in- 
fluence of such-a-one ; he is dead or he is alive ; such 
a thing has happened to him." Detail follows on 
detail, for the most part exact. 

As I have already said when speaking of Professor 
James, Phinuit showed intimate knowledge of Mrs 
James's family. Now, there were no members of the 
family in the neighbourhood ; some were dead, others 
in California, and others in the State of Maine. 

What I have said will suffice to give the reader a 
first idea of the general features of the phenomena. 
I shall be able in future, while reporting the facts, to 
examine as I proceed the hypotheses which they 
suggest. 



CHAPTER IV 

The hypothesis of fraud — The hypothesis of muscle 
reading — " Influence." 

When phenomena of this nature are related, the first 
hypothesis that occurs to the reader's mind is that of 
fraud. The medium is an impostor. His trick may- 
be ingenious and carefully dissimulated, but it is cer- 
tainly merely a trick. Therefore, in order to pursue 
these studies with any good results, this hypothesis 
must be disposed of once for all. Now this is not 
easy. Most men are so made that they have a high 
opinion of their own perspicuity, but a very unfavour- 
able one generally of that of other men. They always 
believe that if they had been there they could have 
quickly discovered the imposture. Consequently, no 
precaution must be omitted ; all safeguards must be 
employed, and it will be seen that the observers of 
Mrs Piper's phenomena have not neglected to do 
this. 

Professor James concealed the identity of as many 
as he could of the sitters whom he introduced to Mrs 
Piper. Personally, he was soon convinced that fraud 
had nothing to do with the phenomena. But the 
point was to convince others. It occured to a mem- 
ber of the Society for Psychical Research that it 

20 



MRS PIPER 21 

would be a good plan to cause Mrs Piper to be 
followed by detectives when she went out, and 
not only herself, but all the other members of her 
family. A singular idea, in my opinion. How- 
ever, if detectives had not been employed, many 
people would even to-day believe that it would 
be possible to clear up the Piper mystery in a 
very short time, in the most natural way in 
the world. This is why Dr Hodgson, on his 
arrival in America, set detectives on the tracks of 
Mr and Mrs Piper. Absolutely nothing was dis- 
covered ; Mr and Mrs Piper asked nobody in- 
discreet questions, made no suspicious journeys, did 
not visit cemeteries to read the names on graves. 
Finally, Mrs Piper, whose correspondence is at all 
times limited, received no letters from Intelligence 
Agencies. 

Later on, the method taken to make sure of her 
good faith was revealed to Mrs Piper. She was not 
at all offended ; on the contrary, she saw how abso- 
lutely legitimate was the precaution. This is another 
proof of her uprightness and intelligence. 

Again, the idea that Mrs Piper could obtain the 
information she gives by means of inquiries made 
abroad is a priori absurd to anyone who has studied 
the phenomena with any care. Her sitters, whom 
she received under assumed names, to the number 
of several hundreds, came from all points of the 
United States, from England, and even from other 
parts of Europe. The greater number passed through 
the hands of Professor James and Dr Hodgson, 
and all necessary precautions were taken that Mrs 
Piper should see them for the first time only a few 



22 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

moments before the commencement of the trance. 
Indeed, they were often only introduced after the 
trance had begun. These precautions have never 
injured the results. The sittings, at least those whicA 
were not spoilt by the medium's state of health, have 
always been marked by a large number of perfectly 
accurate details. 

If Mrs Piper obtained the information through 
spies in her employment, these spies would be obliged 
to send her private details about all the families in 
the United States and Europe, since she hardly ever 
knows to whom she will give a sitting the next day. 
Dr Hodgson arranges for her. Formerly Pro- 
fessor James did this, at least in a large number of 
cases. Now the scientific honesty of Dr Hodgson or 
Professor James (I mention this only for foreign 
readers who may not be acquainted with the reputa- 
tion of these two gentlemen) can no more be sus- 
pected than that of a Charcot, a Berthelot, or a 
Pasteur. Then, what interest could they have in 
deceiving us? These experiments had cost them 
considerable sums, not to speak of time and trouble ; 
they have never profited by them. 

Again, Mrs Piper is without fortune. She would 
not have the means to pay such a police as she would 
need. She is paid for her sittings, it is true ; she 
gains about two hundred pounds a year, but such a 
police service would cost her thousands. But there 
was an excellent way of putting the hypothesis of 
fraud out of question; it was to take Mrs Piper 
out of her habitual environment, to a country where 
she knew nobody. This was done. Certain members 
of the Society for Psychical Research invited her to 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 23 

England, to give sittings in their houses. She con- 
sented without any difficulty. She arrived in Eng- 
land on 19th November 1889, on the Cunard Com- 
pany's steamer Scythia. Frederic Myers, whose 
recent loss is deplored by psychology, should have 
gone to the docks and have taken her to his house at 
Cambridge. But at the last moment he was called 
to Edinburgh, and asked his friend, Professor Oliver 
Lodge, of whom we have already spoken, to receive 
Mrs Piper in his stead. Professor Lodge installed 
her in an hotel with her two little girls who came with 
her. The same evening Mr Myers arrived, and took 
her to his house next day. 

Experiments at Cambridge began at once. This 
is what Mr Myers says about them : — 1 

" I am convinced that Mrs Piper, on her arrival in 
England, brought with her a very slender knowledge 
of English affairs or English people. The servant 
who attended on her and on her two young children 
was chosen by myself, and was a young woman from a 
country village whom I had full reason to believe both 
trustworthy and also quite ignorant of my own or my 
friends' affairs. For the most part I had myself not 
determined upon the persons whom I would invite to 
sit with her. I chose these sitters in great measure 
by chance ; several of them were not resident in 
Cambridge, and except in one or two cases, where 
anonymity would have been hard to preserve, I 
brought them to her under false names, sometimes 
introducing them only when the trance had already 
begun." 

Professor Oliver Lodge in his turn invited Mrs Piper 

1 Proc. ofS.P.R., vol. vi. p. 438. 



24 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

to come and give sittings at his home in Liverpool. 
She went, and remained from 18th December to 27th 
December 1889. During this time she gave at least 
two sittings a day, which fatigued her much. Professor 
Lodge gave up for the time all other work to study her. 
He enumerates at length all the precautions he took 
to prevent fraud. He also declares that Mrs Piper, 
who was perfectly aware of the watch kept upon her, 
never showed the least displeasure, and thought it 
quite natural. He wondered whether, by chance, she 
might not have among her luggage some book con- 
taining biographies of men of the day, and asked 
permission to look through her trunks. She con- 
sented with the best possible grace. But Professor 
Lodge found nothing suspicious. Mrs Piper also 
handed over to be read the greater number of the 
letters she received ; they were not numerous ; about 
three a week. The servants in the house were all 
new ; they knew nothing of the family's private 
affairs, and thus could not inform the medium about 
them. Besides, Mrs Piper never tried to question 
them. Mrs Lodge, who was very sceptical at first, 
kept guard over her own speech, so as not to give 
any scraps of information. The family Bible (on the 
first pages of which, according to custom, memorable 
events are recorded) and the photographic albums 
were locked away. Professor Lodge, like the others, 
presented most of his sitters under false names. 
Finally, he affirms that Mrs Piper's attitude never 
justified the least suspicion ; she was dignified, re- 
served, and not in any way indiscreet. 

In short, during the fifteen years the experiments 
have continued, all the suggestions made by sceptical 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 25 

and sometimes violent objectors have been kept in 
view, that the fraud might be discovered, if fraud 
there were. All has been in vain. The explanation 
of the phenomena must consequently be sought else- 
where. 

As for the trance itself, all those who have seen it 
agree in saying that it is genuine and in no way 
feigned. 

The hypothesis of fraud being disposed of, recourse 
has been had to another, which it has also become 
necessary to abandon — that of the reading of muscu- 
lar movements. It appears that the thought-readers 
who exhibit themselves on the platform accomplish 
their wonderful feats by interpreting, with remarkable 
intelligence, sharpened by long practice, the uncon- 
scious movements of the persons whose wrists they 
are holding. 

Now it is true that formerly Mrs Piper became 
entranced while holding both hands, or at least one 
hand, of the sitter. She kept their hands in hers 
during most of the trance. But Professor Lodge says 
this was far from being always the case. She often 
dropped the sitter's hands and lost contact with them 
for half an hour at a time. Phinuit, or some other 
control, nevertheless continued to furnish exact in- 
formation. Shall we say that while he was holding 
hands he had laid in a provision of knowledge for the 
whole half-hour ? Seriously we cannot. 

But as this objection had often been made, the 
sitters endeavoured to avoid contact with the medium. 
For a long time Mrs Piper has fallen into the trance 
without holding anyone's hand. Her whole body 
reposes, plunged in a deep sleep, except the right 



26 MRS PIPER 

hand, which writes with giddy rapidity and only 
rarely endeavours to touch the persons present. 
Professor Hyslop, in the report which has just 
appeared, 1 affirms that he avoided the slightest 
contact with the medium with all possible care, 
and yet we shall see farther on how exact were 
the facts he obtained, since he believes that he has 
established the identity of his dead father without 
the possibility of a doubt. Therefore the hypothesis 
of thought-reading by means of muscular indications 
must also be put aside. 

Finally, Phinuit affirms that the objects presented 
to him, and which he touches, furnish him with 
information about their former possessors, thanks 
to the " influence " such persons have left on the 
articles ; and in a multitude of cases we should be 
almost forced to admit that it may be so. But here 
we are already plunged into depths of mystery. What 
can this " influence " be ? We know nothing about 
it. Must we believe in it ? Must we believe Phinuit 
when he says that he obtains his information some- 
times from the " influence " left upon the objects, 
sometimes directly from the mouths of the dis- 
embodied spirits ? Before reaching that point, other 
hypotheses must be examined. 

1 Proc. of S.P.R., vol. xvi. 



CHAPTER V 

A sitting with Mrs Piper — The hypothesis of thought- 
transference — Incidents. 

The reader may not be displeased to have a speci- 
men of these strange conversations between human 
beings and the invisible beings, who assert that they 
are the disincarnated spirits of those who day by day 
quit this world of woe. It will not be difficult to 
give the reader a specimen of them. At least one 
half of the fourteen or fifteen hundred pages dedicated 
to the Piper case in the Proceedings of the Society 
for Psychical Research are composed of reports of 
sittings, either taken down in shorthand or given in 
great detail. In some of these reports even the most 
insignificant exclamations of those present are noted. 

I have chosen the 47th of the sittings which took 
place in England, not because it is peculiarly interest- 
ing, but because Professor Lodge's published report 
of it is not too long, and I have no room for more 
extended developments. 

The account of this sitting will perhaps disappoint 
some readers. " What ! " they will say, " is that all 
that spirits who return from the other world have to 
say to us ? They talk as we do. They speak of the 

27 



28 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

same things. They are not spirits." This conclusion 
would perhaps be too hasty. I do not assert that 
they are spirits or that they return from another 
world. I know nothing about it. But if this other 
world existed we should expect that there would not 
be an abyss between it and our own. Nature makes 
no leaps. That is surely a true principle in, and for, 
all worlds. 

We have a means, although an imperfect one, of 
endeavouring to discover if the communicators are 
really returning spirits. It is to ask them to prove 
their identity by relating as large a number of facts 
as possible concerning their life upon earth. The 
investigators of the Piper case have for fifteen years 
devoted themselves to this task, apparently easy, in 
reality difficult and ungrateful. 

In the earlier experiments in the Piper case the 
conversation almost always takes place between the 
sitters and Dr Phinuit. Dr Phinuit does not willingly 
give up his post, though he does so sometimes. 
When he is giving information which he says he 
has received from other spirits he sometimes talks 
in the third person ; sometimes, on the contrary, he 
reports word for word in the first person. This 
detail must not be forgotten in reading the reports. 
The following is a report of the 47th sitting in 
England. 

The sitters are Professor Oliver Lodge and his 
brother Alfred Lodge. The latter takes notes. 
The phrases between parentheses are remarks made 
by Professor Lodge after the sitting. 1 

1 For detailed report of these sittings see Proc. of S.P.R., vol. vi. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 29 

Phinuit — " Captain, x do you know that as I came 2 
I met the medium going out, and she's crying. Why 
is that ? " 

O. L. — " Well, the fact is she's separated from her 
children for a few days and she is feeling rather low 
about it" 

Phinuit.— " How are you, Alfred? I've your 
mother's influence strong. (Pause.) By George ! that's 
Aunt Anne's ring (feeling ring I had put on my hand 
just before sitting) given over to you. And Oily dear, 3 
that's one of the last things I ever gave you. It 
was one of the last things I said to you in the body 
when *I gave it you for Mary. I said, * For her, 
through you.' " [This is precisely accurate.] 

O. L. — " Yes, I remember perfectly." 

Phinuit. — " I tell you I know it, I shall never 
forget it. Keep it in memory of me, for I am not 
dead. Each spirit is not so dim (?) that it cannot 
recollect its belongings in the body. They attract 
us if there has been anything special about them. 
I tell you, my boy, I can see it just as plain as if I 
were in the body. It was the last thing I gave you, 
for her, through you, always in remembrance of 
me." (Further conversation and advice ending, 
" Convince yourself, 4 and let others do the same. 
We are all liable to mistakes, but you can see for 
yourself. There's a gentleman wants to speak to 
you.") 

1 At the first sitting in Liverpool there was some talk of a sea 
captain. Phinuit, who was rather fond of nicknames, jocularly attached 
the epithet " Captain " to Professor Lodge. 

2 I.e., "As I entered the medium's organism." 

3 Here Phinuit is supposed to be reporting in the first person words 
of Aunt Anne, treated as if present. 

4 Of a future life. 



30 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

Mr E, 1 — "Lodge, how are you? I tell you I'm 
living, not dead. That's me. You know me, don't 
you ? " 

O. L. — " Yes, delighted to see you again." 

Mr E. — " Don't give it up, 2 Lodge. Cling to it. 
It's the best thing you have. It's coarse in the 
beginning, but it can be ground down fine. You'll 
know best and correct (?). It can only come 
through a trance. You have to put her in a 
trance. You've got to do it that way to make 
yourself known." 

O. L.— " Is it bad for the medium ? " 

Mr E. — " It's the only way, Lodge. In one sense 
it's bad, but in another it's good. It's her work. If 
I take possession of the medium's body and she goes 
out, then I can use her organism to tell the world 
important truths. There is an infinite power above 
us. Lodge, believe it fully. Infinite over all, most 
marvellous. One can tell a medium, she's like a 
ball of light. You look as dark and material as 
possible, but we find two or three lights shining. 
It's like a series of rooms with candles at one end. 
Must use analogy to express it. When you need a 
light you use it, when you have finished you put it 
out. They are like transparent windows to see 
through. Lodge, it's a puzzle. It's a puzzle to us 
here in a way, though we understand it better than 
you. I work at it hard. I do. I'd give anything I 

1 Phinuit seems to have left, and Mr E. takes his place. This Mr 
E. was an intimate friend of Professor Lodge ; he had appeared at a 
preceding sitting and had offered proofs of his identity, which were 
verified later. Professor Lodge recognised his mode of address. 
Phinuit, we remember, always addressed Professor Lodge as 

Captain." 

2 The investigation into psychic matters. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 31 

possess to find out. I don't care for material things 
now, four interest is much greater. I'm studying 
hard how to communicate ; it's not easy. But it's 
only a matter of a short time before I shall be able 
to tell the world all sorts of things through one 
medium or another. [And so on for some time.] 
Lodge, keep up your courage, there's a quantity to 
hope for yet. Hold it up for a time. Don't be in a 
hurry. Get facts ; no matter what they call you, go 
on investigating. Test to fullest. Assure yourself, 
then publish. It will be all right in the end — no 
question about it. It's true." 

O. L. — " You have seen my Uncle Jerry, haven't 
you?" 1 

Mr E. — " Yes, I met him a little while ago — a very 
clever man — had an interesting talk with him." 

O. L. — " What sort of person is this Dr Phinuit ? " 

Mr E. — " Dr Phinuit is a peculiar type of man. He 
goes about continually, and is thrown in with every- 
body. He is eccentric and quaint, but good-hearted. 
I wouldn't do the things he does for anything. He 
lowers himself sometimes — it's a great pity. He has 
very curious ideas about things and people ; he re- 
ceives a great deal about people from themselves (?), 
and he gets expressions and phrases that one doesn't 
care for — vulgar phrases he picks up by meeting un- 
canny people through the medium. These things 
tickle him, and he goes about repeating them. He 
has to interview a great number of people, and has no 
easy berth of it. A high type of man couldn't do the 
work he does. But he is a good-hearted old fellow. 
Good-bye, Lodge ! Here's the doctor coming." 

1 In accordance with a statement previously made by Phinuit. 



32 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

O. L. — " Good-bye, E. ! Giad to have had a chat 
with you." 

[Doctors voice reappears .] x 

PHINUIT — " This [ring] belongs to your aunt. Your 
Uncle Jerry tells me to ask. . . . By the way, do you 
know Mr E.'s been here ; did you hear him ? " 

O. L. — "Yes, I've had a long talk with him." 

PHINUIT — "Wants you to ask Uncle Bob about 
his cane. He whittled it out himself. It has a 
crooked handle with ivory on the top. Bob has it, 
and has cut initials in it." [There is a stick, but de- 
scription inaccurate.] " He has the skin also, and the 
ring. And he remembers Bob killing the cat and 
tying its tail to the fence to see him kick before he 
died. He and Bob and a lot of the fellows all to- 
gether in Smith's field, I think he said. Bob knew 
Smith. And the way they played tit-tat-too on the 
window pane on All Hallows' Eve, and they got 
caught that night too." (At Barking, where my 
uncles lived as children, there is a field called Smith's 
field, but my Uncle does not remember the cat 
incident.) "Aunt Anne wants to know about her 
sealskin cloak. Who was it went to Finland, or 
Norway ? " 

O. L.— " Don't know." 

PHINUIT.—" Do you know Mr Clark— a tall, dark 
man, in the body ? " 2 

O. L.— " I think so." 

Phinuit. — " His brother wants to send his love to 
him. Your Uncle Jerry, do you know, has been talk- 

1 These changes in the medium's voice are very surprising. If there 
is fraud in the case, Mrs Piper must be the most accomplished actress 
who has hitherto appeared. 

2 I.e., still living. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 33 

ing to Mr E. They have become very friendly. E- 
has been explaining things to him. Uncle Jerry says 
he will tell all the facts, and all about families near, 
and so on, that he can recall. He says if you 
will remember all this and tell his brother, he will 
know. If he doesn't fully understand he must come 
and see me himself, and I will tell him. How's, 
Mary ? " 1 

O. L.— " Middling ; not very well." 

Phinuit. — " Glad she's going away." [She was, 
to the Continent ; but Mrs Piper knew it.] " William 2 
is glad. His wife used to be very distressed about 
him. You remember his big chair where he used to 
sit and think?" 

O. L.— " Yes, very well." 

Phinuit. — " He often goes and sits there now. 3 
Takes it easy, he says. He used to sit opposite a 
window sometimes with his head in his hands, and 
think and think and think." (This was at his office.) 
" He has grown younger in looks, and much happier. 
It was Alec that fell through a hole in the boat, 
Alexander Marshall, her first father." 4 (Correct, as 
before.) " Where's Thompson ? The one that lost 
the purse ? " 

O. L.— "Yes, I know." 

Phinuit. — "Well, I met his brother, and he sent 
love to all — to sister Fanny, he told me especially. 

1 Mrs Lodge. 2 Mrs Lodge's step-father. 

3 These assertions, that spirits return to the places they have lived in, 
and unknown to us, do what they were accustomed to do, are very odd. 
But the literature of the subject is full of such accounts. 

4 Mrs Lodge's father. Phinuit had alluded to this accident in a pre- 
vious sitting, but without being able to explain if it had happened to 
Mrs Lodge's father or her step-father. 

c 



34 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

He tried to say it just as he was going out, but had 
no time — was too weak." 

O. L. — " Oh, yes, we just heard him." 

PHINUIT. — "Oh, you did? That's all right. She's 
an angel ; he has seen her to-day. Tell Ike I'm very 
grateful to him. Tell Ike the girls will come out all 
right Ted's mother and . . . And how's Susie? 
Give Susie my love." 

O. L. — " I couldn't find that Mr Stevenson you gave 
me a mesage to. What's his name?" 

PHINUIT. — "What! little Minnie Stevenson? 
Don't you know his name is Henry? Yes, Henry 
Stevenson. Mother in spirit too, not far away. 1 
Give me that watch." (Trying to open it.) " Here, 
open it. Take it out of its case. Jerry says he took 
his knife once and made some little marks with it 
up here, up here near the handle, near the ring, some 
little cuts in the watch. Look at it afterwards in a 
good light and you will see them." (There is a little 
engraved landscape in the place described, but some 
of the sky-lines have been cut unnecessarily deep, I 
think, apparently out of mischief or idleness. Cer- 
tainly I knew nothing of this, and had never had the 
watch out of its case before. — O. J. L.) 

This example shows the kind of information given. 
Much of it is true; other assertions are unverifiable, 
which does not prove that they are untrue ; others 
contain both truth and errors ; finally, there are cer- 
tainly some which are entirely untrue. For this 
reason these transcendental conversations very much 
resemble the conversations of incarnated human 

1 In these communications the self-styled spirits always affirm that 
the dead get farther and farther by degrees from our universe, in accord- 
ance with time, and their own progress. The Stevenson episode, re- 
ferred to above, is described on page 71. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 35 

beings. Errare humanum est. And it would appear 
that the heavy corpse we drag about with us is not 
alone to blame when we sacrifice to Error. 

But, since the hypothesis of fraud and of uncon- 
scious muscular movement may not be invoked, 
where shall we find the source of the mass of exact 
information Mrs Piper gives us ? The simplest 
hypothesis, after those we have been obliged to set 
aside, consists in believing that the medium obtains 
her information from the minds of those present. 
She must be able to read their souls, as others read 
in a book ; thought-transference must take place 
between her and them. With these data, she would 
be supposed to construct marionettes so perfect, so 
life-like, that a large number of sitters leave the sit- 
tings persuaded that they have communicated with 
their dead relatives. If this were true, the fact alone 
would be a miracle. No genius, neither the divine 
Homer, nor the calm Tacitus, nor Shakespeare, would 
have been a creator of men to compare with Mrs Piper. 
Even were it thus, science would never have met with 
a subject more worthy of its attention than this 
woman. But the greater number of those who have 
had sittings with Mrs Piper affirm that the informa- 
tion furnished was not in their consciousness. If they 
themselves furnished it, the medium must have taken 
it, not from their consciousness, but from their sub- 
consciousness, from the most hidden depths of their 
souls, from that abyss in which lie buried, far out of 
our reach, facts which have occupied our minds for a 
moment even very superficially, and have left therein, 
it appears, indelible traces. 

Thus the mystery grows deeper and deeper. But 



36 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

this is not all. At every moment Mrs Piper gives 
the sitters details which they maintain that they 
never could have known. Consequently she must 
read them instantaneously in the minds of persons, 
sometimes very far distant, who do know them. 
This is the telepathic hypothesis, upon which for the 
moment we will not insist, for we shall be obliged to 
study it carefully later on. 

Professor Lodge has made a list, necessarily in- 
complete, of incidents mentioned by the medium in 
the English sittings which the sitters had entirely 
forgotten, or which they had every reason to suppose 
they had never known, or which it was impossible 
they should ever have known. This list contains 
forty-two such incidents. To give my readers some 
idea of their nature, I will quote four or five of them. 
I will take these incidents from the history of the 
Lodge family, in order to avoid introducing new 
personages unnecessarily. 

At the 16th sitting, 1 on November 30, 1889, 
Phinuit tells Professor Lodge that one of his sons 
has something wrong in the calf of his leg. Now at 
the time the child was merely complaining of pain 
in his heel when he walked. The doctor consulted 
had pronounced it rheumatism, and this was vaguely 
running in Dr Lodge's mind. However, some time 
after the sitting, in May 1890, the pain localised 
itself in the calf. Now there could be no auto-sug- 
gestion in this case, for Professor Lodge tells us he 
had said nothing to his son. 

At the 44th sitting, 2 Professor Lodge asked his 
Uncle Jerry, who is supposed to be communicating, 

1 Proc. of S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 467. 2 Ibid. p. 503. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 37 

" Do you remember anything when you were young ? " 
Phinuit (for him) replies at once, " Yes, I pretty nigh 
got drowned. Tried to swim the creek, and we fellows 
all of us got into a little boat. We got tipped over. 
He will remember it. Ask Bob if he remembers that 
about swimming the creek ; he ought to remember 
it." Uncle Robert, consulted, remembers the incident 
perfectly, but gives different details. This sort of 
confusion about the details of a distant event, the 
partial memory, occurs often to all of us. 

Thus disincarnated beings would seem to resemble 
incarnate ones on this point also. Apparently it was 
not the boat which upset, but the two young Lodges, 
Jerry and Robert, on getting out of it, began some 
horse-play on the bank, and fell into the stream. 
They were obliged to swim, fully dressed and against 
a strong current, which was carrying them under a 
mill-wheel. 

At the 46th sitting, 1 Phinuit reports that the last 
visit the father of Professor Lodge paid was to this 
Uncle Robert, and that he didn't feel very well. Pro- 
fessor Lodge knew nothing of this fact, or, if he had 
once known it, had so completely forgotten it that 
he was obliged to apply to one of his cousins to know 
if it was true. The cousin replied in confirmation of 
the fact. 

At the 82nd sitting, 2 Uncle Jerry, speaking of his 
brother Frank, who is still living, expresses himself 
thus about an event of their childhood, — 

" Yes, certainly ! Frank was full of life ; he crawled 
under the thatch once and hid. What a lot of mis- 
chief he was capable of doing. He would do any- 

1 Proc. ofS.P.R., vol., vi. p. 514. 2 Ibid., p. 549. 



38 MRS PIPER 

thing ; go without shirt, swop hats, anything. There 
was a family near named Rodney. He pounded one 
of their boys named John. Frank got the best of it, 
and the boy ran ; how he ran ! His father threatened 
Frank, but he escaped ; he always escaped. He could 
crawl through a smaller hole than another. He 
could shin up a tree quick as a monkey. What a 
boy he was ! I remember his fishing. I remember 
that boy wading up to his middle. I thought he'd 
catch his death of cold ; but he never did." 

This Uncle Frank was aged about 80, and was living 
in Cornwall : the general description is characteristic. 
Professor Lodge wrote to him to ask if the above details 
were correct. He replied, giving exact details : " I 
recollect very well my fight with a boy in the corn 
field. It took place when I was ten years old, and 
I suppose a bit of a boy-bully." 

On the 29th November 1 Professor Henry Sidg- 
wick, of Cambridge, had a sitting with Mrs Piper. 
It was arranged that Mrs Sidgwick, who stayed at 
home, should do something specially marked during 
the sitting. Mrs Piper was to be asked to describe 
it, to prove her power of seeing at a distance. 
Phinuit, when questioned, replied, " She is sitting in 
a large chair, she is talking to another lady, and 
she is wearing something on her head." These 
details were perfectly correct. Mrs Sidgwick was 
sitting in a large chair, talking to Miss Alice Johnson, 
and she had a blue handkerchief on her head. 
However, Phinuit was wrong about the description 
of the room in which this happened. 

1 Proc. ofS.P.R., p. 627. 



CHAPTER VI 

Phinuit — His probable origin — His character — What he says 
of himself— His French — His medical diagnosis— Is he 
merely a secondary personality of Mrs Piper? 

An interesting question arises at the point we have 
reached — " What is Phinuit ? Whence his name ? 
Whence does he come ? Should we believe that he 
is a disincarnated human spirit, as he himself obstin- 
ately affirms, or must we think him a secondary person- 
ality of Mrs Piper ? " If he is a spirit, that spirit is 
not endowed with a love of truth, as we shall see, and 
on this point he too much resembles many of ourselves. 
In any case we may notice in passing the obstinacy 
of these controls in wishing to pass for disincarnated 
spirits ; the fact is at least worthy of attention. I 
am willing to allow that this may be a suggestion 
imposed by the medium on her secondary personali- 
ties ; but I ask myself why this suggestion can never 
be annulled. Numerous efforts have been made, 
above all in the case of Phinuit ; they have ended 
only in provoking jests from the disincarnated 
doctor, who absolutely insists on remaining a spirit. 
However this may be, we will here endeavour to dis- 
cover the origin of this control. 

39 



40 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

It will not have been forgotten that Mrs Piper's 
mediumship blossomed forth, if I may thus express 
myself, during the sittings she had with the blind 
medium J. R. Cocke. Now this medium was then, 
and has, I believe, always since been, controlled by a 
certain doctor called Albert G. Finnett, a French 
doctor of the old school which produced Sangrado. 
This old barber-surgeon, as his medium calls him, 
is very modest. He says that he is " nobody particu- 
lar " ; I hope he does not mean to say that he re- 
sembles Jules Verne's Captain Nemo. There is a 
considerable resemblance between this name Finnett 
and the English pronunciation of Phinuit. Therefore 
we may well inquire whether the medium Cocke, when 
developing Mrs Piper's mediumship, may not also 
have made her a present of his control. Dr Hodgson 
has questioned Phinuit on this point several times. 
But Phinuit asserts that he does not know what is 
meant, and that Mrs Piper's is the first human organ- 
ism through which he has manifested. I will not try 
to settle the question. 

If Phinuit has not varied about his own name, he 
has certainly varied in its orthography. Till 1887, 
whenever he consented to sign his name, he signed 
Phinnuit, with two n's. Dr Hodgson accuses him- 
self of being the originator of the orthographic varia- 
tion. He carelessly took the habit of writing Phinuit 
with one n y and gave this orthography to his friends. 
Mrs Piper, in the normal state, often had occasion to 
see the name thus written. And so, in the first half 
of 1888, Phinuit also began to write his name with 
one n. Dr Hodgson only discovered the mistake 
later on looking over his notes. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 41 

The reader will perhaps be astonished that I speak 
of the Phinuit personality as if it were already estab- 
lished that the hypothetical doctor were really a 
spirit ; that is to say, a personality as distinct from 
that of the medium as the reader and I are from one 
another. I must hold this point in reserve. The 
investigators of the Piper case, finding as decided a 
difference between the controls and the subject in a 
normal state as exists between individuals of flesh 
and blood, have adopted the language of these con- 
trols for convenience' sake, while warning us that, in 
so doing, they have no intention of prejudging their 
nature. I do, and shall continue to do, the same. 
There is no impropriety in this so long as it is well 
understood. 

To return to Phinuit's character. This doctor in 
the Beyond is not a bad fellow ; on the contrary, he 
is very obliging, and his chief desire is to please every- 
body. He repeats all he is asked to repeat, makes all 
the gestures suggested to him by the communicators 
in order that they may be recognised ; even those of 
a little child. In his rather deep voice he sings to a 
weeping mother the nursery song or the lullaby which 
she sang to her sick child, if the song will serve as a 
proof of identity. I find at least one such case in 
Dr Hodgson's report. The couplet sung was prob- 
ably well-known to Mrs Piper; it is a common one. 
But as this song had often been sung during her last 
illness by the child who was communicating, and as 
it was the last she sang upon earth, the coincidence 
is at least surprising. Probably Mrs Piper took the 
air and the words from the source whence she takes 
so many other details — a source unknown to us. 



42 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

However, if Dr Phinuit is good-hearted, he is also 
occasionally deplorably trivial. His language is rarely 
elevated, and his expressions are almost always 
vulgar. On occasion he does not dislike a joke or a 
touch of humour. Thus we have seen that he mis- 
chievously persisted in addressing Professor Lodge 
as " Captain." On another occasion he is a long time 
in finding a person's name — Theodora. Then he 
adds, mockingly, " Hum ! it is a fine name once one 
has got hold of it." This does not prevent Phinuit 
from altering Theodora into Theosophy, and calling 
the person in question Theosophy ! I could easily 
give other examples of Phinuit's wit. But on this 
point I must remark that the word " Theosophy " 
astonishes me in Phinuit's mouth, even when he is 
making a joking use of it. Evidently Mrs Piper 
knows the name and the thing well. But at the time 
when Dr Phinuit attended his contemporaries in 
flesh and blood, there was, I believe, no question of 
Theosophy, nor of its foundress, Madame Blavatsky. 
There was indeed a sect of Theosophists at the 
end of the eighteenth century, but it was very 
obscure. 

Dr Phinuit is, besides, very proud of his exploits. 
He likes to make people believe that he knows and 
sees everything. Indeed, perhaps it is because he 
likes to seem not to be ignorant of anything that he 
sometimes asserts so many controverted facts. And 
this is to be deplored ; for how much more useful 
service he would render if his facts were not doubtful ! 
Unluckily, this is far from being the case. Phinuit 
occasionally seems to tell falsehoods deliberately. 
This has been made evident when he has been asked 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 43 

to prove his identity by giving details of his terres- 
trial life. 

In December 1889, 1 he replies to Professor Alfred 
Lodge, the brother of Professor Oliver Lodge, — 

" I have been from thirty to thirty-five years in 
spirit, I think. I died when I was seventy, of leprosy ; 
very disagreeable. I had been to Australia and 
Switzerland. My wife's name was Mary Latimer. 
I had a sister Josephine. John was my father's name. 
I studied medicine at Metz, where I took my degree 
at thirty years old, married at thirty-five. Look up 

the town of , also the Hotel Dieu in Paris. I 

was born at Marseilles, am a Southern French gentle- 
man. Find out a woman named Carey. Irish. 
Mother Irish; father French. I had compassion 
on her in the hospital. My name is John Phinuit 
Schlevelle (or Clavelle), but I was always called Dr 
Phinuit. Do you know Dr Clinton Perry? Find 
him at Dupuytren, and this woman at the Hotel 
Dieu. There's a street named Dupuytren, a great 
street for doctors. . . . This is my business now, to 
communicate with those in the body, and make them 
believe our existence." 

I think a bad choice was made of Dr Phinuit to 
fill this part. The information he here gives us about 
himself does not bear marks of absolute sincerity. 
We might say he was an Englishman or American 
trying to pass himself off for a Frenchman to his 
fellow-countrymen, and having a very small acquaint- 
ance with France and French affairs. And if he had 
even stopped there ! But no. He has often contra- 
dicted himself. He tells Dr Hodgson 2 that his name 

1 Proc. ofS.P.R., vol. vi. p. 520. 2 Ibzd, vol. viii. p. 50. 



44 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

is Jean Phinuit Scliville. He could not tell the date 
of his birth or death. But, on comparing the facts he 
gives, we might conclude that he was born in 1790, 
and that he died in i860. He tells Dr Hodgson that 
he studied medicine in Paris, at a college called 
Merciana or Meerschaum^ he does not know exactly 
which. He adds that he also studied medicine at 
" Metz in Germany." It is no longer he who had a 
sister named Josephine ; it is his wife. "Josephine," 
he says, "was a sweetheart of mine at first, but I went 
back on her, and married Marie after all." This Marie 
Latimer is supposed to have been thirty when she 
married Dr Phinuit, and to have died at fifty. He 
asks Dr Hodgson, "Do you know where the Hospital 
of God is (Hospital de Dieu) ? " " Yes, it is at Paris." 
" Do you remember old Dyruputia (Dupuytren) ? " 
" He was the head of the hospital, and there is a 
street named for him." Phinuit asserts that he 
went to London, and from London to Belgium, 
and travelled a great deal, when his health broke 
down. 

In the above-quoted passage, Phinuit asserts that 
he had set himself to prove the existence of spirits. 
If he had set himself the contrary task he would have 
been more likely to succeed, when he gives us such 
information as the above. If we went no further, we 
should need to ask ourselves how serious men can 
have concerned themselves during so long a period 
with such idle stories. Happily, as we shall see later, 
others have succeeded in establishing their identity 
better than Phinuit has done. Phinuit himself, even 
if he tells the most foolish stories when he speaks of 
himself, reveals profoundly intimate and hidden 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 4 5 

secrets when he speaks of others. Truly, it is cor- 
rectly said that these phenomena are disconcert- 
ing. But they are none the less interesting to 
science when their authenticity and the sincerity 
of the medium are beyond discussion, as in the 
present case. I will therefore go on examining 
the Phinuit personality ; it will be the reverse side 
of the medal. 

An American doctor, whom Dr Hodgson desig- 
nates by the initials C. F. W., has a sitting with 
Mrs Piper on May 17, 1889. Here is a fragment 
of the dialogue between him and Phinuit. 1 

C. F. W. — " What medical men were prominent in 
Paris in your time ? " 

Phinuit. — " Bouvier and Dupuytren, who was at 
Hotel Dieu." 

C. F. W. — " Was Dupuytren alive when you passed 
out?" 

Phinuit. — "No; he passed out before me; I 
passed out twenty or thirty years ago." 

C. F. W. — " What influence has my mind on what 
you tell me?" 

Phinuit. — "I get nothing from your mind; I 
can't read your mind any more than I can see 
through a stone wall." (Phinuit added that he saw 
the people of whom he spoke objectively, and that 
it was they who gave him his information.) 

C. F. W. — " Have you any relatives living in Mar- 
seilles?" 

Phinuit. — " I had a brother who died there two 
or three years ago." 

A little later on, at the same sitting, Phinuit says, 

1 Proc. of the S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 98, 



46 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

" Many people think I am the medium ; that is all 
bosh." 

Well, so much the better. But if Phinuit is not 
Mrs Piper, neither does he appear to be a French- 
man. A further proof of this is that he is incapable 
of keeping up a conversation in French. He speaks 
English with a pronounced cafe-concert French ac- 
cent, it is true, but that is not a proof. He likes to 
count in French, and sometimes he pronounces two 
or three consecutive words more or less correctly. 
But who would venture to maintain that Mrs Piper's 
sub-consciousness has not received them in some 
way ; it would be all the more likely, because at 
one time our medium had a governess for her chil- 
dren who spoke French fluently. However, Dr C. 
F. W., quoted above, says that Phinuit understood 
all that he said to him in French, which Mrs Piper 
in her normal state could not have done. On the 
other hand, Professor William James says that Phinuit 
does not understand his French. Whom shall we be- 
lieve ? One thing is certain, French or not, Phinuit 
does not speak French. Dr Hodgson asked him why 
this was. Phinuit, who is never at a loss, explained 
as follows : — " He had been a long time in practice 
at Metz, and as there are a great many English 
there he had ended by forgetting his French." This 
is just such a piece of childishness as the secondary 
personalities invent. 1 Dr Hodgson pointed out the 
absurdity of the explanation to Phinuit, and added, 
" As you are obliged to express your thoughts 
through the organism of the medium, and as she 
does not know French, it would be more plausible 

1 Proc. of. S.P.R., part xxi. vol. viii. p 51. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 47 

if you said that it would be impossible to express 
your thoughts in French by means of Mrs Piper." 

Phinuit found the explanation magnificent, and 
some days after served it up whole to another in- 
quisitive person who questioned him. 

As Dr Hodgson continued to tease him about his 
name, he ended by admitting, or believing, that his 
name was not Phinuit at all. 

" It was the medium Cocke who insisted that my 
name was Phinuit one day at a sitting. I said, ' All 
right, call me Phinuit if you like, one name is as good 
to me as another.' But you see, Hodgson, my name is 
Scliville, I am Dr John Scliville. But, when I think 
about it, I had another name between John and 
Scliville." 

Phinuit did think about it, and at another sitting 
he said he had remembered. His name now was 
Jean Alaen Scliville. Alaen, as we see, is unmis- 
takably French. In short, these are wretched in- 
ventions, quite as wretched and much Jess poetic 
than the Martian romance, due to the subconscious- 
ness of Mile. Smith. 

Does Phinuit better justify the title of doctor 
which he assumes ? On this point opinions are less 
divided. His diagnosis is often surprisingly exact, 
even in cases where the patient does not himself 
know what his illness is. As long ago as 1890, Pro- 
fessor Oliver Lodge expresses himself as follows 
with regard to Phinuit's medical knowledge. The 
opinion of a man of science like Professor Lodge is of 
great weight, though he is a physicist and not a doctor. 

"Admitting, however, that ' Dr Phinuit' is pro- 
bably a mere name for Mrs Piper's secondary con- 



48 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

sciousness, one cannot help being struck by the 
singular correctness of his medical diagnosis. In 
fact, the medical statements, coinciding as they do 
with truth just as well as those of a regular physician, 
but given without any ordinary examination, and 
sometimes without even seeing the patient, must be 
held as part of the evidence establishing a strong 
prima facie case for the existence of some abnormal 
means of acquiring information." 1 

Dr C. W. F., of whom we have spoken above, 
asks Phinuit to describe his physical state for him, 
and Phinuit describes it perfectly. But here, evi- 
dently, seeing that C. W. F. was a doctor, and must 
have known about himself, we may only be concerned 
with thought-transference. Being curious, Dr C. W. 
F. asked Phinuit how many years he had to live. 
Phinuit replied by counting on his fingers in French 
up to eleven. This happened in 1889. If the pro- 
phecy was fulfilled, Dr C. W. F. must have gone to 
rejoin his colleague in the other world. It would be 
interesting to know whether this is the case. 

In general, the other doctors who have had sittings 
with Mrs Piper find more fault with Dr Phinuit's 
prescriptions than with his diagnosis. They blame 
the prescriptions as being more those of a herbalist 
than a doctor. This would not be a great reproach. 
If a Dr Phinuit has really existed, he must have 
practised fifty or sixty years ago, and must have 
studied at the beginning of the last century. Thera- 
peutics of that epoch differed considerably from those 
of the present day. For this reason Dr C. W. F. 
asks whether Dr Phinuit's medical knowledge really 

1 Proc. of S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 449. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 49 

exceeds what Mrs Piper might have read in a manual 
of domestic medicine. As far as the diagnosis is 
concerned, his knowledge assuredly exceeds this. 

Dr C. W. F. reports a fact which, though it would 
not prove Dr Phinuit's medical ignorance, would once 
more prove his ignorance of French, and even of the 
Latin of botanists. Dr F. asked, 1 " Have you ever 
prescribed chiendent or Triticum repens ? " using both 
the French and Latin names. Phinuit seemed much 
surprised, and said, " What is the English of that ? " 
It is certain that a French doctor, and, above all, a 
doctor in the beginning of the last century, must 
know chiendent) and even Triticum repens. 

Mrs Piper told Dr Hodgson that Phinuit had often 
been shown medicinal plants, and had been asked 
their names, and that he had never made a mistake. 
Dr Hodgson procured specimens of three medicinal 
plants from one of his friends. He himself remained 
entirely ignorant of their names and uses. Phinuit 
carefully examined the plants, and was unable to 
indicate their names or their uses. But neither 
would this incident prove much. The living prac- 
titioners who could not be caught in this way must 
be rare. 

I will give two or three of Phinuit's diagnoses as 
examples. I will choose those which have been 
given to Dr Hodgson about himself, as my readers 
now know him well. 

At one of the first sittings 2 Dr Hodgson had with 
Mrs Piper, Phinuit pronounced the following judg- 
ment on his physical constitution, " You are an 
old bach, (bachelor) and will live to be a hundred." 

1 Proc. ofS.P.R., vol. viii. p. 51. 2 Ibid. 

D 



50 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

And he added that Dr Hodgson had at the time 
a slight inflammation of the nasal membranes, though 
there was no external sign to guide him. 

On another occasion Dr Hodgson asked him a 
question about a pain he had had but which he no 
longer felt. Phinuit was evasive at first, saying, 
" I have told you already that you are perfectly 
well." He then passed his hand over Dr Hodgson's 
left shoulder, placed his finger under the left shoulder- 
blade scapula, on the exact spot where the pain had 
been, and said it must have been caused by a draught, 
which was probably true. Another time, Dr Hodg- 
son complained of a pain, without explaining where. 
Phinuit instantaneously put his finger on the painful 
spot, below the chest. He said at first that the pain 
was caused by indigestion, but then corrected himself 
spontaneously and said it was caused by a muscle 
strained in some unusual exercise. Dr Hodgson 
had not thought of this explanation ; but it was 
true that, two days before, when going to bed, and 
after some weeks' interruption, he had exercised 
himself with bending his body backwards and 
forwards. The pain appeared next day. Phinuit 
ordered applications of cold water on the painful 
spot, and friction with the hand. Naturally there 
exist other diagnoses more complicated and extra- 
ordinary than those I have quoted. 

In terminating this study of Phinuit, I must return 
to the eternal question — Is Phinuit a different per- 
sonality from Mrs Piper, or is he only a secondary 
personality? None of those who have studied the 
question closely have ventured to decide it categori- 
cally. There is no so clearly defined distinction 



' 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 51 

between the normal personality and the secondary 
personalities which have so far been studied as 
there is between Mrs Piper and Phinuit. In fact, 
the medium and her control have not the same 
character, nor the same turn of mind, nor the same 
information, nor the same manner of speech. It is 
not so with normal and secondary personalities. 
Our personality may split into fragments, which, 
at a cursory glance, may appear to be so many 
different personalities. But when these fragments 
are closely studied numerous points of contact are 
found. When suggestion is added to this segregation, 
the separation between the normal and secondary 
personalities is even more emphatic. But then there 
are traces of automatism present which are not to be 
found in Phinuit. He seems to be as much master 
of his mental faculties and of his will as you or I. 

Finally, if we consider that many of Mrs Piper's 
controls carry the love of truth further than Phinuit, 
that they have succeeded in proving their identity 
in the eyes of their intimates, who were none the 
less sceptics to begin with ; if we consider the 
George Pelham and Hyslop cases, among others, 
which we shall fully discuss a little further on, we 
shall be almost tempted to let Phinuit benefit by 
the doubt about his colleagues, and to believe that he 
is really a consciousness different from that of Mrs 
Piper. 



CHAPTER VII 

Miss Hannah Wild's letter — The first text given by Phinuit — 
Mrs Blodgett's sitting — Thought-reading explains the case. 

There is a case of which I shall speak with some 
detail in this chapter, for three reasons: — (i) The 
good faith of the experimenters being unquestioned, 
if the experiment had succeeded we should certainly 
have had a first step towards proof of a future life. 
Experiments of this kind must be arranged if the 
desired end is to be attained. Even if only one out 
of ten were successful, we should have established a 
method of procedure, and should certainly in time 
discover the truth. (2) This example will once again 
show the reader the character of Phinuit, who hesi- 
tates at no invention, and risks being caught in the 
act of imposture sooner than own to his ignorance or 
incapacity. (3) The reader will find in it examples 
of the untrue assertions which are found in all the 
bad sittings. 

This dishonesty of Phinuit certainly complicates 
the problem singularly. But I wish to present it as 
it actually is, with its dark and bright sides. Science 
must endeavour to explain both. 1 

Miss Hannah Wild died on July 28, 1886. She 

1 Proc. o/S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 69. 
52 



MRS PIPER 53 

was a strong Baptist, and remained so to her last 
moments. About a year before her death a Boston 
spiritualist paper published a message supposed to 
have come from her dead mother. Miss Hannah 
Wild was much struck by it. 

Her sister advised her to try the following experi- 
ment. Miss Hannah Wild should write a letter 
whose contents she alone knew, and when she died, 
she should return, if not prevented by circumstances 
stronger than her will, and communicate the contents 
of the letter to her sister through some medium. 
The letter would only be opened when some message 
bearing all the marks of authenticity should arrive. 

This was done. Hannah Wild wrote the letter, 
sealed it and enclosed it in a tin box. It was under- 
stood that no mortal hand was to touch it. When 
giving it to her sister she said, " If I can come back 
it will be like ringing the City Hall bell ! " 

Mrs Blodgett, Hannah Wild's sister, adds, " Hands 
have never touched that letter; it was in my husband's 
safe. When I sent it to Professor James I took it 
out with scissors." 

Mrs Blodgett having, in the last half of 1886, 
seen Professor James's name in a journal concerned 
with Psychical Research, wrote to him and told him 
the above circumstances. In consequence he tried to 
get the letter read through Mrs Piper. He sent her, 
not the letter, of course, but a glove which Miss 
Hannah Wild had worn on the day she wrote the 
letter, and the lining of her hat. 

Mr J. W. Piper, Mrs Piper's father-in-law, acted as 
sitter. Phinuit took his time, and tried for the con- 
tents of the letter during several sittings. The 



54 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

result was a long dramatic elucubration, which 
reminds us involuntarily of certain of Mile. Smith's 
subliminal productions. I will give three para- 
graphs of it. The remarks between parentheses 
are Mrs Blodgett's ; the reader will appreciate the 
facts by the light the remarks throw upon them. 
However, it may not be useless to remark that Phinuit 
found Miss Hannah Wild's exact name, which had 
been carefully hidden from him. 

i. "Dear Sister, — In the bottom of my trunk in 
the attic with my clothes I have placed a little money 
and some jewels, given to me, as you know, by 
mother, and given to her by grandfather, who has 
now passed away. Bessie, I now give to you ; they 
are all I have, I wish I could have more. It has 
grieved me not a little not to have given the Society 
something, but as you know, sister, I am unable to 
do so. If it be possible I will give them my presence 
in spirit." (Sister left no trunk. Never lived in any 
house with an attic. Mother never gave her any 
jewels. Mother's father died in 1835. Mother died 
in 1880, and gave all her jewels to me. These jewels 
had previously been given to mother by myself. 
Sister left money, and could have given the Society 
some had she chosen to do so.) 

2. " The table-cover which I worked one year ago 
I want you to give sister Ellen, John's wife. The 
reason I did not dispose of them before will be a 
satisfactory proof of spirit return. My dearest sister, 
should you ever marry, as I think you will, take the 
money and use it as you think best, to buy a wedding 
outfit." (She never worked a table-cover. I worked 
one and gave her. Brother John died when five years 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 55 

old. There is no one by the name of Ellen con- 
nected with the family. She did think I would marry, 
but knew that I had plenty of money to buy an 
outfit). 

3. "Do not dress in mourning for me, for if it be 
true the spirit can return I want to see you dressed 
in light, not black. Not for me now, my dear sister 
Bessie. Try to be cheerful and happy through your 
married life, and when you hear from me — this for 
you a copy, ' remember sister Hannah is not dead, 
only passed out of the body.' I will give you a 
beautiful description of our life there and of my 
darling mother if I see her." (Hannah always wore 
black, and often said it would be wicked for me to 
take it off, for my child always said, " Mamma, you 
will always wear black for me," and I have worn 
black for twenty years, ever since my child died.) 

And so forth. 

Phinuit's elucubrations were six good manuscript 
pages long. Except Hannah Wild's name everything 
was wrong. And yet Mr J. W. Piper affirms that 
during all the sittings he had the feeling that he was 
talking to the spirit of Miss Hannah Wild. Phinuit 
was asked for a description of the communicator ; 
all the details were false. After this it is unnecessary 
to say that the letter Miss Hannah Wild had written 
before her death, when opened by Professor James, 
after receiving the Phinuit letter, differed totally from 
that document. 

So far the Blodgett-Wild case is on the whole 
commonplace. Phinuit lied when he pretended to 
communicate with Hannah Wild's spirit; for there 
is no more reason here than elsewhere to sup- 



56 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

pose conscious fraud on Mrs Piper's part. But this 
is the point at which the case becomes interesting, 
and where it may perhaps throw some light on 
Phinuit's manner of procuring information, and on 
the character of Phinuit himself. If we judged only 
from this case, it would seem that Phinuit was merely 
a secondary personality of Mrs Piper, possessing the 
extraordinary power of reading people's minds un- 
hindered by distance. But let us say at once that a 
number of other cases render the problem much more 
complex. The conclusion to be drawn from what 
follows is, that if Phinuit is really what he asserts that 
he is, he does not draw his information only from dis- 
incarnated spirits, whom he is supposed to perceive 
objectively; he also reads the minds of the living, 
and with the information he finds there he creates 
personages, apparently life-like, and bearing a strong 
resemblance to deceased persons. 

On the 30th of May 1888 l Mrs Blodgett in person 
had a sitting with Mrs Piper. The time was fixed by 
Dr Hodgson, who took care, as usual, not to name 
the future sitter, and not to give any hint of her iden- 
tity. In my eyes this sitting is remarkable. Mrs 
Blodgett, with great good sense, sums it up thus : 
"All the details which were in my mind Phinuit 
gave exactly. On all the points of which I was 
ignorant he gave false replies, or said nothing." 

During the whole sitting Phinuit asserted that he 
was literally repeating the words of Miss Hannah 
Wild, present. I shall quote the most typical inci- 
dents. The remarks between parentheses are taken 
from Mrs Blodgett's comments. 

1 Proc. of S.P.R.y vol. viii. p. 75. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 57 

Hannah Wild. 1 — "Bessie, Betsie Blodgett, my 
sister. How glad I am to see you ! I am Anna, 
Hannah, your sister, Hannah Wild. How's father 
and all the folks? Oh, I am so glad to see you!" 
(All this time Mrs Piper kept on slapping me with 
her hand just like sister. When she died my name 
was not Blodgett but Bessie Barr.) 

H. W. — " Saw you once before in that audi- 
ence. Threw a message at you." (Four weeks 
after sister's death, John Slater, a medium, said, 
pointing to me amongst a large audience, " There 
is a lady here who wants to have you know she is 
here. She says she will tell you what is in that 
paper soon.") 

H. W. — " How's the Society, Lucy Stone and all 
of them ? " (Lucy Stone is the editor of the Woman's 
Journal, and wrote a piece about sister when she died.) 

H. W.— " My photo in that bag." 

Mrs Blodgett had brought a bag containing several 
things which had belonged to her sister. Mrs Piper 
tried to open it, but could not. It seems that Miss 
Hannah Wild, living, could only open the bag with 
difficulty. Mrs Blodgett opened it. The so-called 
Hannah Wild threw the objects out pell-mell, saying, 
" Picture of mine in here." This was so. Now this 
photograph was the only thing in the bag which Mrs 
Blodgett did not know was there ; she had slipped 
her sister's will into an envelope in which the photo- 
graph already was, but she had not consciously 
noticed it was there. Her subconsciousness had prob- 

1 Phinuit is speaking, but as he is supposed to be repeating Miss 
Hannah Wild's words literally, it is easier to speak as if she were 
speaking directly. 



53 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

ably been more perspicacious, and it is from that 
Phinuit had probably drawn the detail ; at least unless 
he has the power of seeing certain things through 
opaque bodies. 

H. W. — (Takes her will, which she had shaken out 
of the envelope containing the photograph.) " This is 
to you. I wrote it and gave it to you. That was my 
feelings at the time I wrote it. You did not think as 
I did. You made me feel sad sometimes. But you 
did take good care of me. I always felt there was 
something that would never part us. Do just as I 
told you to. You remember about my dress? Where's 
my comb ? You remember all about my money ? I 
told you what to do with that. That ain't written in 
this paper. I told you that on my death-bed." (All 
this is correct, except that I know nothing about a 
comb. The will disposed of her books and dresses 
and all her things, except her money.) 

H. W.— " How is Alice ? " 

MrsB.— "What Alice?" 

H. W.— "The little girl that's a namesake." 
(Our living sister Alice had a child named Alice 
Olivia, and Hannah always called her Alice : it was 
our mother's name. The others called her Ollie. 
Hannah did not like this, and did all she could to 
make us know that she did not want the A.lice 
dropped.) 

H. W. — " Mother is here. Where's doctor ? Where's 
brother ? " (My husband is a doctor ; Hannah knew 
him. We have one brother living named Joseph, who 
travels most of the time.) Hannah Wild takes a gold 
chain wrapped in silk. Mrs Blodgett says, " Hannah, 
tell me whose and what is that ? " 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 59 

H. W. — (Feeling tassel at end of chain) " My mother's 
chain." (The chain was a long chain of mother's. It 
was cut in two after she died. Hannah had worn one 
half. The half which I took to the sitting had not 
been worn since mother's death, and it had a tassel 
on the end, different from the half Hannah had 
worn.) 

H. W.— " Who's Sarah ? " 

Mrs B.— " Sarah Grover ? " 

H. W.— " No, Sarah Obb— Hodg— " (The medi- 
um's hand points to Mr Hodgson, and the voice says 
it belongs to him.) Then Hannah Wild adds, " Sarah 
Hodson." (Sarah Hodson was a friend of sister's at 
Waterbury, Connecticut. I had thought of her the 
night before when I met Mr Hodgson, as she also 
came from London, England.) 

H. W. — " Where is my big silk handkerchief?" 

Mrs B.— " I gave it to Clara. You told me 
to." 

H. W.— " Where is my thimble ? " 

Mrs B.— " I don't know." 

H. W. — " I saw you put it into this bag." (The 
handkerchief was a large silk one given to sister 
by a lady who lived with us for years, and it 
came from England. I did not know I had put 
Hannah's thimble in the bag, but found on return to 
the hotel that it was there on the bed, with the rest 
of the things I had taken out of the bag before start- 
ing for the sitting.) 

Mrs B. — " Can you tell me, sister, how many 
brothers you have in spirit life ? " 

H. W. — " One, two, three." (I asked her how many 
brothers, because William had only been dead since 



60 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

March 27 in the same year (1888). " Three " was 
correct.) 

Mrs B. — " Can you tell me where that letter is now 
that you wrote ? " 

H. W.— " It is at home, in tin box." 

Mrs B. — " Can't you tell me more about it ? " 

H. W. — " I have told you. It would be like ringing 
church bells if I could come back." (The letter was 
in the bag wrapped up in rubber cloth. Sister did 
say when we put the letter in tin box, " It would be 
like ringing the City Hall bell if I can come back.") 

H. W.— " Where's William and doctor ? " 

Mrs B. — " Hannah, you tell me where William is." 

H. W.W He is here. I found him." 

Mrs B.— " How long has he been ? " 

H. W.— "Weeks. You know all about it. He 
sticks to you all the time every day. William wants 
to know how you like that lot." 

MrsB.— " What lot?" 

H. W. — " You ought to know. You bought it to 
bury him in. William is better out of the world than 
in it. He was a strange fellow. He don't like that 
lot. Do you ? " 

Mrs B.— " No." (I had bought him a lot in Wood- 
lawn Cemetery, N.Y. His wife wanted him buried 
there. We wanted to take him to our home and bury 
him by mother. Brother was very proud, and we 
thought the lot was not as nice as he would like.) 

At the end of the sitting the so-called Hannah 
Wild said that she must go because it was church 
time, and she would not miss it. Mrs Blodgett re- 
marks that this is also characteristic of her sister. It 
was Decoration Day, and the living Hannah Wild 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 61 

would certainly not have missed it. This last inci- 
dent is odd ; but there are many analogous ones in 
the literature of the subject and in Mrs Piper's 
sittings. Often the communicator will not allow 
that he is dead, or has passed into another world ; 
if he is asked what he is doing, he appears surprised, 
and affirms that he is carrying on his usual occupation ; 
if he is a doctor, he asserts that he continues to visit 
his patients. Phinuit is often asked to describe the 
people of whom he speaks. He pictures them as 
they were on earth, in their customary dress, and he 
affirms that he so sees them. At the end of one 
sitting Professor Hyslop's father exclaims, " Give 
me my hat ! " Now this was an order he often 
gave in his lifetime when he rose painfully from his 
invalid chair to accompany a visitor to the gate. I 
repeat, these incidents are odd and embarrassing for 
the spiritistic hypothesis. It is difficult to admit 
that the other world, if it exists, should be a servile 
copy of this. Should we suppose that the bewilder- 
ment caused by death is so great in certain indi- 
viduals that it is some time before they perceive the 
change in their environment? It is difficult to admit 
this. Should we suppose these speeches are auto- 
matisms of the communicator, rendered half un- 
conscious towards the end of the sitting by the heavy 
atmosphere of the medium's organism ? But, when 
the communication is not direct, when an intermedi- 
ary is speaking through the organism, what should 
we think ? Are these traits thrown in intentionally 
by the communicator, the better to prove his identity ? 
No doubt these incidents are very embarrassing to 
the spiritistic hypothesis. On the other hand, if 



62 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

we allow that the self-styled communicators are 
created by the entranced Mrs Piper from the ele- 
ments she finds here and there in the minds of 
living persons, these incidents are quite natural ; it 
would be surprising not to meet with them. I 
mention the difficulty in passing ; it will not fall to 
my lot to solve it. 

However this may be, Mrs Blodgett left the sitting 
convinced that she had been conversing with her own 
consciousness externalised, and not with the spirit of 
her sister. But if it had not been for the previous 
incident of the letter, which had invited distrust, and 
if Mrs Blodgett had had less judgment, she would 
probably have left the sitting convinced that she had 
been talking to her defunct sister. Many spiritualists 
must commit like errors everyday. This shows what 
circumspection is needed in such studies as these. 

Mrs Blodgett asked Dr Hodgson to have some 
sittings for her, to try again to obtain the text of 
the famous letter. 1 At the sitting of August I, 1888, 
Dr Hodgson gave Phinuit a lock of Hannah Wild's 
hair. Phinuit began by saying it was not her hair; 
he then recognised his mistake, but said that some- 
one else must have touched it. Then he gave a new 
version of the letter. " This letter is concerned with 
an incident in Hannah's former life," he affirmed. 
Then he dictated, " It's something about Hannah's 
early history, that letter is. At one time I met a 
person whom I loved. A circumstance in our affec- 
tion changed my whole life. Had it not been for 
this one thing I should have been married and 
happy. Consequently I went into religious work, 

1 Proc. of S.P.J?., vol. viii. p. 78. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 63 

and did all the good I could. Whoever reads this 
letter after I am gone will know why I remained 
Hannah Wild . . ." Mrs Blodgett's comment on 
this text is very interesting. She says, "This is 
not what my sister wrote on her deathbed, but it is 
perfectly true. It was the great grief of sister's life." 

How could Phinuit guess this by simply touching a 
lock of hair? Can it be that our feelings, our sorrows 
and joys, leave a persistent vibration on the objects 
we touch, which sensitives can perceive after even a 
long interval ? Numerous and well-observed facts 
would almost compel us to believe so. It would 
seem as if the vibrations of the soul imprinted them- 
selves on matter as sound waves are recorded on the 
cylinder of a phonograph. Certain subjects, in an 
abnormal state, would be able to recover them. 
There is, after all, nothing in this repugnant to 
science. 

This abnormal state, which allows sensitives to 
apprehend past vibrations, is perhaps only a partial 
abandonment of the body by the spirit. In that 
case it would be easier to understand that those 
who, like Phinuit, have entirely quitted their bodies, 
those who are in another world, can read these 
vibrations as easily as we can read a book. But if 
this is so, why does not Phinuit own it ? It would 
be marvel enough to satisfy his vanity. It would 
not, in any event, prevent his obtaining information 
directly from disincarnated beings. But he ought 
to state precisely in each case from what source he 
derives his knowledge. He does nothing of the 
kind, and thus renders it almost impossible for us 
to believe in his individuality. 



64 MRS PIPER 

At this same sitting Phinuit asserted that he would 
give the letter word for word if he had a longer lock 
of hair. So Mrs Blodgett sent a longer lock, which 
was given to him on October 3, 1888. The text he 
gave was as incorrect as the preceding ones. A last 
effort was made in 1889, again without result. Miss 
Hannah Wild has not come back from the other 
world to tell us what she wrote on her death-bed. 

I will end with another example which demon- 
strates Phinuit's cleverness in reading people's minds 
even at a distance. On June 3, 1891, 1 Mrs Blodgett 
wrote a letter to Phinuit. Dr Hodgson read it to 
him at a sitting on the 15th of the same month. 
This drew from Phinuit the following statement, 
which had nothing to do with the contents of the 
letter : " She's been reading a funny book — a life of 
somebody. She called on an old friend of Hannah's 
— somebody I told her to go and see. Mrs Blodgett 
has a friend named Severance." Mrs Blodgett writes 
on June 17, " Really Phinuit is doing wonderfully 
well as far as thought-transference goes. Saturday 
night, June 13, I gave a talk to the Young Women's 
Rooms about Helen Gardener's new book, Is this your 
Son, my Lord? " (On the) " 14th I did not go to see 
the friend in body, but I know my mind went, and 
I wrote him the letter to ask him what Phinuit 
told me to do when there." Mrs Blodgett adds : — " I 
had a friend named Severance, but sister Hannah 
had never heard of him." 

1 Proc. ofS.P.R., vol. viii. p. S3. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Communications from persons having suffered in their mental 
faculties — Unexpected communications from unknown per- 
sons — The respect due to the communicators — Predictions 
— Communications from children. 

The Blodgett-Hannah Wild case is, I repeat, of a 
kind to throw discredit on the spiritualist hypothesis. 
If it and analogous cases alone were considered, it 
would be needful to ask why earnest men, after long 
hesitation, have finally given the preference to this 
hypothesis. But psychic phenomena, and medium- 
istic phenomena in particular, are infinitely various ; 
they present a multitude of aspects, and it would not 
be wise to consider them separately. 

In this Hannah Wild case everything seems to 
support the telepathic hypothesis. By this must be 
understood, not only the reading of thoughts in the 
consciousness, and even in the subconsciousness, of 
the persons present, but also in that of absent persons, 
however far off they may be. And what Phinuit calls 
" the influence " must be added. This mysterious 
" influence " might be the traces of vibrations left 
on objects by our thoughts and feelings. Evidently 
this hypothesis plunges us into mystery, at least as 
much as does the spiritualist hypothesis. Neverthe- 
less, we should be obliged to give it the preference, 
e 65 



66 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

if it were sufficiently supported, because it is, after 
all, more in touch with our present conceptions than 
its rival. 

Even the incident of the medium who, designating 
Mrs Blodgett amidst a numerous audience, said to 
her, " There is a lady here who wants to speak to 
you ; she will soon give you the contents of the 
paper," can easily be explained by telepathy. Mrs 
Blodgett was in the presence of a medium. Now 
some medium was to reveal to her the mysterious 
text of her sister's letter. That was enough to bring 
the recollection of the letter into the foreground of 
her consciousness, where the medium may have read 
it telepathically. 

But again, there are an infinite number of other 
cases which telepathy does not explain at all, or 
only insufficiently. I shall try to show this by re- 
peating some of the arguments put forward by Dr 
Hodgson in his remarkable report in 1898, and in 
the chapter entitled " Indications that the ' Spirit ' 
Hypothesis is True." x 

The most important of these arguments is founded 
upon the communications of persons whose mental 
faculties had been impaired by illness for a more or 
less long period before their deaths. A long series 
of concordant observations inspired Dr Hodgson with 
this argument. It is as follows : — " If we had to do 
with telepathy, the communications should be most 
clear and abundant in the cases where the memories 
of the dead are most clear and abundant in the minds 
of the living." 

But experience shows that this is not so. When 

] Proc. of S.P.R.> vol. xiii. p. 370. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 67 

the self-styled communicator has suffered from mental 
illness before his death, the communications repeat 
the trouble feature by feature ; they are full of con- 
fusion and incoherence. This confusion and inco- 
herence is all the graver, as the mental trouble 
preceding death was graver. It disappears slowly, 
but sometimes traces of it appear years after. 
Telepathy does not explain this. If there is mad- 
ness in the mind of the dead person, there is none 
in the minds of the living who remember him. On 
the other hand, if we introduce the spiritualist hypo- 
thesis, the fact is quite admissible, either because 
the mental trouble may only slowly disappear, or 
because (and the controls assert this) the mere fact 
of the disincarnated spirits plunging again into the 
atmosphere of a human organism temporarily repro- 
duces the trouble. 

Besides, there is always more or less incoherence 
in the communications made very shortly after death, 
even when the communicator has kept his full mental 
faculties up to his last moments. But if the com- 
municator were really what he says he is, we should 
expect this, for three reasons — the violent shock of 
disincarnation must trouble the mind ; the arrival in 
an entirely new environment, where he must at first 
be unable to distinguish much, should trouble him 
still more ; and lastly, these first attempts at com- 
munication may be impeded by his want of skill in 
using the strange organism ; he would require a sort 
of apprenticeship. 

But when no mental trouble has preceded death, 
the incoherence of the first communications does not 
last. They soon become as clear as the imperfection 



68 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

of the means which the dead man has to use permits 
In the George Pelham case, which we shall examine 
later on, the first communications were also inco- 
herent. Yet George Pelham was soon to become 
one of the most clear and lucid, if not the most 
clear and lucid, of all the dead persons who have 
claimed to manifest through Mrs Piper's organism. 
But George Pelham died suddenly by an accident, 
and his intellectual faculties, which, moreover, were 
above the average, had never been injured. 

This is, I repeat, what experience seems to show. 
But doubtless many more observations are needed 
before we can affirm that it is really proved. 

However, unless Dr Hodgson and his colleagues 
are mistaken, these facts are contrary to what we 
should expect on the telepathic theory. I will quote 
some examples. 

Dr Hodgson tried to obtain communications from 
one of his friends, designated by the initial A., more 
than a year after the latter's death. He spent six 
sittings over it, but the result was meagre. He 
obtained some names, and with difficulty some 
mention of certain incidents of A.'s life. Some of 
the incidents were even unknown to Dr Hodgson 
at the time, but all was full of incoherence and 
confusion. Finally he gave it up on the advice of 
George Pelham, who said that A.'s spirit would not 
be clear for some time yet. This A. had suffered 
from violent headaches and nervous exhaustion for 
some years before his death, though the troubles had 
not amounted to insanity. Now, just at the time 
when A. was incapable of manifesting clearly, other 
spirits were manifesting with all desirable lucidity 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 69 

in identical circumstances. Another case quoted by 
Dr Hodgson is that of a Mr B. who had committed 
suicide in a fit of insanity. He was not personally 
known to Dr Hodgson. During several years Mr 
B.'s communications were extremely confused, even 
about matters with which Dr Hodgson was well 
acquainted. 

A third communicator, an intimate friend of Dr 
Hodgson's, had also committed suicide. About a 
year after his death he still seemed to be ignorant 
of events which he had known well in his life- 
time and which were quite clear in the inquirer's 
mind. More than seven years after his death 
he wrote through the medium's hand, "My head 
was not clear, and is not yet, when I speak to 
you." 

On December 7, 1 1893, M. Paul Bourget, of the 
Academie Frangaise, and his wife, had a sitting with 
Mrs Piper. M. Paul Bourget much wished to com- 
municate with an artist who had committed suicide 
at Venice by throwing herself out of a gondola. 
There exists no written report of this sitting, and 
consequently we do not know exactly what it was 
worth. But on December 11 2 M. Bourget had 
another sitting, and this time Dr Hodgson accom- 
panied him and took notes. The artist seemed to 
make desperate efforts to communicate and to write 
herself, but she could only produce two or three 
French words, amongst which apparently was the 
exclamation, " Mon Dieu ! " Nevertheless her 
Christian name was given and the place where 
she had killed herself, Venice, and the syllable 

1 Proc. of S.P R t> vol. xiii. p. 494. Ibid., p. 495. 



70 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

Bou y the beginning of Bourget, was often repeated. 
Why were the results so poor? M. and Mme. 
Bourget knew this person well, and their minds 
were full of reminiscences on which the medium 
had only to draw. 

However, some people might reason as follows. 
Objects having been used by the persons with 
whom it is desired to communicate are nearly 
always given to Mrs Piper. If the medium obtains 
her information not only from the minds of the 
living, but likewise from the " influence," that is, 
from the vibrations which our thoughts and feel- 
ings may have left recorded on these objects, the 
imperfections of the earlier communications of per- 
sons whose minds have been disturbed might be 
explained by the theory that the "influence" left 
by an insane person would be neither so clear nor 
so easy to read as that left by a sane one. But then 
why should the communicators grow clear with time? 
Why should they become lucid at the time when 
they ought to be still more confused, if the tele- 
pathic hypothesis is the correct one? 

But this interpretation falls to the ground entirely 
when we take into account the numerous communi- 
cators who are unknown, or almost unknown, to the 
sitters, of whom absolutely nobody is thinking, 
and who come in the middle of a sitting to send a 
message to their surviving relatives. Mrs Piper 
cannot have produced these communications by 
means of the "influence" left on objects, unless 
we suppose that the presence of these objects is 
not necessary and that any " influence " may strike 
the medium from any point of the compass at the 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 71 

moment when she least expects it. That would 
perhaps be stretching the hypothesis beyond allow- 
able limits. And these cases are, I repeat, numerous 
and very interesting. I quote three for my readers' 
edification. 

During the 46th 1 of the English sittings with 
Messrs Oliver and Alfred Lodge as sitters, Phinuit 
suddenly exclaimed, — 

" Oh, dear, there is something very bad about this. 
Here's a little child called Stevenson — two of them — 
one named Mannie (Minnie ?) wants to send her love 
to her father in the body and the mother in the body 
— she had sore throat and passed out. He is very bad 
and has gone away very unhappy. She's clinging 
to me and begging me to tell you that she's little 
Mannie Stevenson, and that her father's almost 
dead with grief, he sits crying, crying dreadful, and 
he's gone away very unhappy. Tell him she's not 
dead, but sends her love to him ; and tell him not 
to cry." 

Professor Lodge. — " Can she send her name any 
better ? " 

Phinuit. — "Oh, they called her Pet, and when 
she was ill they called her Birdie. And tell mamma 
too, do." 

Professor L.— " Well, I will if I can." 

Professor Lodge could not discover the Steven- 
son family, which was a pity, for two reasons ; first, 
that a message from beyond the tomb might have 
restored the despairing parents to a little hope and 
calm ; and secondly, because cavillers could not have 
attributed the incident to the medium's cunning, 

1 Proc. ofS.P.R.) vol. vi. p. 514. 



72 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

which they would not fail to do if other incidents 
of the same nature did not make this interpretation 
almost inadmissible. 

At the 45th English sitting, 1 when Messrs Oliver 
and Alfred Lodge and Mr and Mrs Thompson were 
the sitters, Phinuit suddenly said, — 

" Do you know Richard Rich, Mr Rich ? " 

Mrs Thompson. — " Not well ; I knew a Dr Rich." 

Phinuit. — "That's him; he's passed out. He 
sends kindest regards to his father." And Phinuit 
began directly to speak of something else. 

At the 83rd sitting, when Mr and Mrs Thompson 
were again present, Phinuit said all at once, — 

" Here's Dr Rich ; " upon which Dr Rich proceeds 
to speak. 

Dr Rich. — " It is very kind of this gentleman " {i.e., 
Dr Phinuit) " to let me speak to you. Mr Thompson, 
I want you to give a message to father." 

Mr Thompson. — " I will give it." 

Dr R. — "Thank'youathousand times; itisverygood 
of you. You see I passed out rather suddenly. Father 
was very much troubled about it, and he is troubled 
yet. He hasn't got over it. Tell him that I am 
alive — that I send my love to him. Where are my 
glasses " (the medium passes her hands over her eyes)? 
" I used to wear glasses " (true). " I think he has them, 
and some of my books. There was a little black 
case I had; I think he has that too. I don't want 
that lost. Sometimes he is bothered about a dizzy 
feeling in his head — nervous about it — but it is of no 
consequence." 

Mr T.— " What does your father do ? " 
1 Proc. ofS.P.R., vol. vi. p. 509. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 73 

(The medium took up a card and appeared to 
write on it, and pretended to put stamp in corner.) 

Dr R.— " He attends to this sort of thing. Mr 
Thompson, if you will give this message I will help 
you in many ways. I can and I will." 

Professor Lodge remarks about this incident, 
" Mr Rich, senior, is head of Liverpool Post Office. 
His son, Dr Rich, was almost a stranger to Mr 
Thompson, and quite a stranger to me. The father 
was much distressed by his son's death, we find. 
Mr Thompson has since been to see him and given 
him the message. He (Mr Rich, senior) considers 
the episode very extraordinary and inexplicable, 
except by fraud of some kind. The phrase, ' Thank 
you a thousand times,' he asserts to be characteristic, 
and he admits a recent slight dizziness. Mr Rich 
did not know what his son means by a black case. 
The only person who could give any information 
about it was at the time in Germany. But it was 
reported that Dr Rich talked constantly about a 
black case when he was on his deathbed." 

No doubt Mr and Mrs Thompson knew Dr Rich, 
having met him once. But they were quite ignorant 
of all the details here given. Whence did the medium 
take them ? Not from the " influence " left on some 
object, because there was no such object at the 
sitting. 

At a sitting on the 28th November 1892, 1 at the 
house of Mr Howard, when those present were Mr 
and Mrs Howard, their daughter Katherine, and Dr 
Hodgson, Phinuit suddenly asked, — 

" Who is Farnan ? " 

1 Proc. of S.P.P.j vol. xiii. p. 416. 



74 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

Mr Howard. — "Vernon?" 

Phinuit, — " I don't know how you pronounce it. 
It is F-a-r-n-s-w-o-r-t-h." (Phinuit spelt it.) 

Dr Hodgson.—" What about it ? " 

Phinuit.—" He wants to see you." 

Dr H. — " He wants to see me?" 

Phinuit.—" Not you, but this lady." 

Mrs H. — " Well, what does he want to say to me ? 
Is it a woman or a man ? " 

Phinuit. — " It is a gentleman ; and do you re- 
member your Aunt Ellen ? " 

Mrs H.— " Yes ; Which Aunt Ellen?" 

Phinuit.— "She has got this gentleman." {I.e., 
this man was in her service.) 

Further on, Phinuit adds, " That gentleman wanted 
to send his love to her, and to be remembered to you 
— so that you may know he is here, and it is a test. 
These little things sometimes interrupt me greatly 
and when I go to explain it to you, you can't under- 
stand it. But sometimes when I am talking to you, 
I am suddenly interrupted by somebody who don't 
realise what they are doing, and then I give you 
what they say as near as I can, you understand that, 
and it is very difficult sometimes for me to discern 
it and place it in the right place." 

Mrs Howard asked her Aunt Ellen if she had 
known anyone named Farnsworth, without telling 
her more. Phinuit was right : a gardener named 
Farnworth had worked for her uncle and then for 
her grandfather thirty-five or forty years before. 
Mrs Howard had never heard of him. 

Incidents like those I have just related are evi- 
dently difficult to explain on the telepathic theory. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 75 

But a more complete refutation of the telepathic 
hypothesis would be to get a certain number of 
fulfilled predictions. The medium could not read 
events which have not yet occurred, either in the 
minds of the living or in the " influence " left on 
objects. Phinuit has often tried his hand at predic- 
tions ; I will quote one. 

At M. Bourget's second sitting, 1 in 1893, a Mrs 
Pitman appeared, who had lived a long time in 
France and spoke French well, and who offered to 
help the artist with whom M. Bourget wished to talk 
in her efforts to communicate. 

In 1888, Mrs Pitman, who was a member of the 
American Society for Psychical Research, had had 
two sittings with Mrs Piper. Among other things, 
Phinuit said to her, " You are going to be very sick ; 
you will go to Paris ; you will be very sick : you will 
have great weakness in the stomach and head. A 
sandy complexioned gentleman will attend you while 
you are ill beyond the sea." In consequence of this, 
Mrs Pitman asked Phinuit what the end of the illness 
would be. Phinuit made evasive replies. Mrs Pit- 
man asked Dr Hodgson's intervention; he insisted 
in his turn, and Phinuit got out of it by saying, 
" After she gets over the sickness she will be all right." 

Mrs Pitman replied that there was nothing the 
matter with her stomach ; she contradicted Phinuit 
on every point, and he appeared much annoyed. 
But Mrs Pitman soon fell ill. She was attended by 
a Dr Herbert, who was very fair ; he diagnosed in- 
flammation of the stomach. Then Mrs Pitman began 
to believe in Phinuit's prediction ; but interpreting 

1 Proc. ofS.P.R.y vol. xiii. p. 496. 



j6 MRS PIPER 

his last words wrongly, she believed she should 
recover. Dr Charcott attended her at Paris for a 
nervous illness. She suffered from weakness in the 
head, and her mental faculties were impaired. In 
short, she died. 

Again, other communications which do not fit in 
with the telepathic theory are those from very young 
children. When they communicate a short time 
after death, they reproduce their childish gestures, 
they repeat the few words they had begun to 
stammer ; they ask by gestures for the toys they 
liked. All these details are evidently to be found in 
the minds of the parents. But when these children 
communicate long years after their death, it is as 
if they had grown in the other world ; they only 
rarely allude to the impressions of their babyhood, 
even when these impressions remain vivid in the 
minds of the father and mother. George Pelham 
was one day acting as intermediary for a child who 
had been dead many years. The mother naturally 
spoke of him as a child, and George Pelham remon- 
strated, " Roland is a gentleman ; he is not a little 
boy." 1 

1 Proc. of S. P.P., vol. xiii. p. 512. 



CHAPTER IX 

Further consideration of the difficulties of the problem — George 
Pelham — Development of the automatic writing. 

Phinuit's empire remained uncontested till the 
month of March 1892. He sometimes yielded his 
place to other controls, but rarely through a whole 
sitting. However, in March 1892, a new communi- 
cator appeared, who imposed his collaboration on 
Phinuit, with the latter's consent or without it. This 
newcomer called himself George Pelham, 1 and 
asserted that he was the disincarnated spirit of a 
young man of thirty-two, who had been killed four 
or five weeks before by a horse accident. However 
that may be, this new control had more culture, more 
moral elevation, and a greater love of truth than the 
so-called French doctor. The latter benefited by 
the companionship ; he tried to be more truthful, 
and seemed to make fewer appeals to his imagina- 
tion ; in short, all the sittings improved, even those 
in which Phinuit appeared alone. 

The newcomer did everything in his power to 
establish his identity. His success is still a matter 
open to discussion, in the view of some persons, and 
their doubts at least prove that, in order to solve this 
greatest of all problems, it is not enough that the 

1 Not the real name. See p. 78, Trans. 

77 



78 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

communicators should give us numerous details 
which would seem at a first glance to establish their 
identity, though the few cases in which identity- 
appears to be proved furnish us with a strong pre- 
sumption in favour of survival after death. If 
George Pelham is what he says he is, future genera- 
tions will owe him profound gratitude ; he has done 
all that he could, under circumstances which are, it 
appears, very unfavourable, although we are not in a 
position to understand the difficulties. 

It is not always easy to prove identity, even be- 
tween the living. Imagine a man in England, at the 
end of a telegraph or telephone wire ; imagine that a 
certain number of his friends at the other end of the 
wire, in France, refuse to believe him when he says 
he is So-and-so, and say, " Please prove your 
identity." The unfortunate man will be in difficulties. 
He will say, " Do you remember our being together 
in such a place ? " The reply will be, " Nonsense ; 
somebody has told you of that incident, and it does 
not in the least prove that you are the person you 
say you are." And so on, and so on. One fact is 
incontestable, however ; there is somebody at the end 
of the wire. The telepathic theory asserts that, in 
spite of appearances, there is no one at the end of the 
wire, or, at least, that no one is there but the medium, 
temporarily endowed with powers as mysterious as 
they are extraordinary. But to return to George 
Pelham. 

Pelham is not his exact name. The last syllable 
has been slightly modified, from motives of discretion. 
He belonged to a good family in the United States, 
which counts Benjamin Franklin amongst its an- 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 79 

cestors. He had studied law, but when his studies 
were finished he gave himself up exclusively to 
literature and philosophy. He had published two 
works, which brought him much praise from com- 
petent judges. He had lived for a long time in 
Boston or its neighbourhood. The last three years 
of his life were passed in New York. In February 
1892 he fell from his horse and was killed on the spot. 

He had interested himself in Psychical Research, 
though very sceptical about the matter. He was a 
member of the American Society, and later of the 
American Branch of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search. Dr Hodgson knew him very well, and liked 
to talk to him on account of the soundness of his 
judgment and the liveliness of his intelligence. But 
neither time nor circumstances had allowed ties of 
affection or real friendship to be established between 
them. 

Two years before George Pelham's death, he and 
Dr Hodgson had a long discussion regarding a future 
life. George Pelham maintained that it was not 
only improbable, but also inconceivable. Dr Hodg- 
son maintained that it was at least conceivable. 
After much exchange of argument, George Pelham 
ended by allowing so much, and finished the conver- 
sation by saying that, if he should die before Dr 
Hodgson, and should find himself " still existing," 
he would " make things lively " in the effort to reveal 
the fact. 

George Pelham, more fortunate than many others 
who, before or after him, have made the same 
promise, seems to have kept his word. That many 
others have been unable to do so proves nothing. 



80 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

The means of communication are still dinfinitely rare ; 
Mrs Piper is an almost unique medium of her kind 
up to the present day. It may be that the great 
majority of the inhabitants of the other world are in 
the same position as the great majority in this, and 
are ignorant of the possibility of communication. 
Even if those who promise to return know of this 
possibility, the difficulty of recognising their friends 
must be great, since they do not seem to perceive 
matter. Their friends who are still in the body 
should, it appears, call them by thinking intently of 
them, by presenting to good mediums articles which 
belonged to the dead, and to which a strong 
emotional memory is attached, and by asking the 
controls of these mediums to look for them. 

When these precautions are not taken, the sur- 
vivors are wrong to blame their friends' failure to 
keep their word, or to conclude that all is ended with 
the death of the body. 

George Pelham may have been enabled to mani- 
fest himself by particularly favourable circumstances. 
He knew of Mrs Piper's existence, although, most 
probably, Mrs Piper did not know him. In 1888 
the American Society for Psychical Research had 
nominated a commission for the investigation of 
mediumistic phenomena ; this commission asked 
Mrs Piper for a series of sittings. I do not know 
whether George Pelham was a member of the com- 
mission, but he was present at one of the sittings. 
The names of all the sitters were carefully kept 
* private, and nothing happened of a nature to draw 
the attention of the medium to George Pelham, who 
in all probability passed unnoticed. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 81 

Dr Hodgson thinks he can affirm that Mrs Piper 
only quite recently learned that George Pelham had 
been present at one of her sittings. The name of 
George Pelham must have been revealed to her con- 
siderably later on, for, in her normal state, she is 
quite ignorant of what she has said in her trance 
state ; she learns it, as do all those who are inter- 
ested in these questions, by reading the Proceed- 
ings of the Society for Psychical Research ; except 
when Dr Hodgson thinks proper to tell her any- 
thing. 

With the appearance of George Pelham there arose 
a new method of communication — the method of 
automatic writing. 

It was only on March 12, 1892, 1 that it was 
granted to Dr Hodgson to be present for the first 
time when this writing was produced ; although it 
had occurred on rare occasions before. Phinuit was 
serving as intermediary for a communicator who 
called herself Annie D. Towards the end of 
the sitting Mrs Piper's arm rose slowly till the hand 
was over the top of her head. The arm remained 
rigid in this position, but the hand trembled very 
rapidly. Phinuit exclaimed, " She's taken my hand 
away," and added, " she wants to write." Dr Hodgson 
put a pencil between Mrs Piper's fingers and a block- 
book on her head. " Hold the hand," said Phinuit. 
Dr Hodgson grasped the wrist and stopped the 
trembling. Then the hand wrote, " I am Annie 
D. I am not dead but living;' and some other 
words ; then Phinuit murmured, " Give me back my 

1 Proc. of S. P.P., vol. xiii. p. 291. 
F 



82 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

hand." The arm remained contracted and in the 
same position for a short time, but finally, slowly, 
and as though with much difficulty, it moved down 
to the side. During the following sittings the writing 
was produced in the same inconvenient position. 
But on April 29, 1892, Dr Hodgson arranged a 
table so that Mrs Piper's right arm could rest com- 
fortably on it ; then, seizing the arm and commanding 
with all his power, " You must try to write on the 
table," he succeeded, by using not a little force, in 
getting the arm down. Since then the writing has 
been produced with the arm resting more or less on 
the table. When a control takes possession of the 
arm to write, it is seized with violent spasmodic 
convulsions. The block - books, writing - books, 
pencils, and everything on the table are thrown in 
confusion on to the floor. Sometimes consider- 
able force must be employed to keep the arm 
still. Then a pencil is placed between the fingers, 
and the writing begins. Sometimes, but rarely, 
the writing is interrupted by a spasm ; the hand is 
firmly closed and the wrist bent, but after a few 
seconds the spasm disappears, and the writing 
begins again. 

On most occasions, since the automatic writing 
has become easy, two controls have manifested 
simultaneously — one by means of the voice, the 
other by writing ; Phinuit continuing to use the 
voice, according to his former custom. George 
Pelham, although he also uses the voice occasionally, 
prefers writing. On the 24th February 1894 a 
control wrote, "There is no reason why various 
spiritual minds cannot express their thoughts at the 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 83 

same time, through the same organism." This is 
really what happens. The voice may keep up 
a conversation with a sitter while the hand 
keeps up another in writing with someone else on 
a wholly different subject. If the sitter who is talking 
with the hand allows his attention to be distracted 
by what the voice says, the hand recalls his attention 
by its movements. When anyone is speaking to 
the hand control, it is necessary to speak to the 
hand, and close to the hand, or there is a risk of 
not being understood. In short, one must behave 
as if the hand were a complete and independent 
being. 

Observation of this phenomenon suggested to Dr 
Hodgson that by using the left hand he could perhaps 
obtain three communications on three different sub- 
jects. He tried and succeeded, although imperfectly ; 
no doubt because, in the normal state, the left hand 
is not used to writing. 

Formerly Phinuit used to protest when the hand 
was seized, and asked at once that it should be 
returned to him, as we have seen above. Since the 
automatic writing has been developed the hand may 
be used by one control without the fact being per- 
ceived by the control who is using the voice. One 
day Phinuit was talking with a sitter about his 
relations, when the hand suddenly, and so to say 
surreptitiously, wrote for Dr Hodgson a communica- 
tion supposed to come from an intimate friend, and 
treating of a subject altogether different from those 
of which the voice was speaking. Dr Hodgson adds 
that it was "precisely as if a caller should enter a 
room where two strangers to him were conversing, 



84 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

but a friend of his also present, and whisper a special 
message into the ear of the friend without disturbing 
the conversation." 1 

Phinuit seems to prefer not to notice what the 
hand is doing. He talks as long as he has an inter- 
locutor, but, when the messages given through the 
hand distract the attention of this interlocutor, 
Phinuit often says, " I'll help him." What does he 
mean by this ? It is a mystery. But if it is wished 
to continue the conversation with him, the ear must 
be addressed directly he is ready to resume. All 
this does not interrupt the writing ; the head and the 
hand do not interfere with one another. 

The observers of these strange phenomena, especi- 
ally Dr Hodgson, maintain that the controls write 
without consciousness that they are writing, as, no 
doubt, they speak without consciousness that they 
are speaking. According to what they say, these 
controls perceive in the body of the medium two 
principal masses of the mysterious fluid, the unknown 
energy which appears like light to them, and which 
they call the " light." One of these masses is in the 
head, the other in the hand. The controls think 
"in" this light, and their thoughts are transmitted 
to us automatically through the organism. 

The automatic writing differs according to the 
controls. They do not always succeed in reproducing 
the characteristics of their handwriting when alive. 
George Pelham has tried to do so at least once, and 
did not succeed. But this should not surprise us ; 
we do not work as well with other people's tools as 
with our own. In any case this difference in the 

1 Proc. of S. P. JR.) vol. xiii. p. 294. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 85 

handwriting is a presumption the more in favour of 
the difference of individuality. 

The writing often looks like that on a lithographic 
stone, and can only be read when reflected in a 
glass ; this writing, which is called mirror-writing, 
is produced as rapidly as ordinary writing, 
though Mrs Piper, in her normal state, would be 
unable to write in this way. This mirror-writing 
has been often observed in subjects who write 
automatically; the cause for it is still to be 
found. 

On other occasions words are written backwards. 
Thus for hospital^ latipsoh will be obtained. With 
certain mediums not only words but whole sentences 
are thus written. To read them, they must be begun 
at the last letter and read backwards to the first. 
Syllables are also often misplaced in Mrs Piper's 
automatic writing; thus hospital may be written 
hostipal. I remind the reader that I am referring 
to facts well attested by competent men, about which 
there can be no question of fraud. 

There exist detailed minutes of many of the sit- 
tings, copied from stenographic notes. An attempt 
was made to introduce a phonograph. Phinuit 
jokingly felt the mouth with his hands and asked, 
" What is this thing with a tube ? " The attempt 
to explain its use to him was unsuccessful. How- 
ever, the phonograph recorded the sitting fairly 
well, but the experiment was not repeated — why, 
I do not know, for the intonations of the controls 
would have been an interesting study. 

I have often used expressions of affirmation in 
this chapter, and the reader might therefore conclude 



86 MRS PIPER 

that the existence of spirits is no longer a hypothesis 
in my eyes, but a reality. I have already warned 
him, and warn him again, that I speak thus only for 
convenience' sake, and that the existence of spirits 
is still as hypothetical to me as to anyone else. 



CHAPTER X 

How George Pelham has proved his identity — He recognises 
his friends and alludes to their opinions — He recognises 
objects which have belonged to him — Asks that certain 
things should be done for him — Very rarely makes an 
erroneous statement. 

Some of my readers must have asked themselves 
what the returning George Pelham can have said 
to make grave and intelligent men think he has 
proved his identity. I shall try to give them some 
idea by relating such incidents as I can report with- 
out entering into too slight or complete details. I 
cannot relate everything, in the first place for want 
of space, and secondly, because I should be tire- 
some — a thing to be avoided in a popular work like 
the present. 

When Dr Hodgson wrote the report which ap- 
peared in 1898, George Pelham, who, like Phinuit, 
is always ready to act as intermediary (though em- 
ploying writing instead of speech) had had occasion 
to see one hundred and fifty sitters, among whom 
thirty were old friends of his. He recognised the 
whole thirty, and never mistook a stranger for a 
friend. He not only addressed them all by name 
but took with each of them the tone he had been 
accustomed to take. 

87 



88 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

We do not speak in the same way to all our 
friends. The tone of our conversation differs accord- 
ing to the character and the age of the person we 
address, and according to the degree of esteem or 
affection we have for him. These shades of manner 
are typical, though instinctive, and therefore are 
difficult to reproduce artificially. 

George Pelham, then, addressed the thirty friends 
whom he had the opportunity of meeting through 
the medium in the tone which he was in the habit 
of taking formerly with each one of them. The 
incidents I shall quote are only examples; I have 
said why I cannot recapitulate all that has been 
published about these sittings. 1 Besides, the sitters, 
for reasons easy to imagine, have declined to permit 
the publication of all that was most private, and con- 
sequently most convincing, in the sittings. 

From the beginning George Pelham asks to see 
his father. He says that he wishes to talk to him 
about private affairs, and also that he should like 
to convince him, if possible, of his existence in a 
new world. Mr Pelham was at once informed, and 
though he was very sceptical both by nature and 
education, he, with his second wife, George Pelham's 
stepmother, visited Mrs Piper at once. They were 
introduced under false names. Quite at the begin- 
ning of the sitting George Pelham wrote, " Hullo, 
father and mother, I am George ! " The communica- 
tions which followed were altogether what Mr Pel- 
ham, senior, would have expected from his living 
son. 

1 Those readers who are interested in this question are recommended 
to readDr Hodgson's Report, Proc. of S. P.P., vol. xiii., Trans. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 89 

At one of the earliest sittings he asks after one of 
his friends, a young writer, and urges that he should 
edit one of his, George Pelham's, unpublished papers. 

While George Pelham was living in Boston he 
was connected by bonds of strong affection with the 
Howard family. He lived with them often and for 
long periods. He and James Howard often dis- 
cussed serious philosophical problems together. At 
the first sitting George Pelham insistently asked for 
the Howards. 1 "Tell Jim I want to see him. He 
will hardly believe me, believe that I am here. I 
want him to know where I am. O good fellow ! " 
He welcomes Mr and Mrs Howard in a characteristic 
way: "Jim, is that you? Speak to me, quick. I 
am not dead. Don't think me dead. I'm awfully 
glad to see you. Can't you see me? Don't you 
hear me ? Give my love to my father, and tell him 
I want to see him. I am happy here, and more so 
since I find I can communicate with you. I pity 
those people who can't speak." 

A Mr Vance has a sitting. George Pelham had 
known him. At first the communicator does not 
appear to notice him, being occupied in giving 
messages to Dr Hodgson. But presently George 
Pelham recognises him, and says, " How is your 
son ? I want to see him some time." " George, 
where did you know my son ? " " In studies in 
college." "George, where did you stay with us?" 
" Country, peculiar house, trees around, porch that 
projects at the front. Vine at the side. Porch at 
the front, and swing on the other side." All this 
was correct. 2 

5 Proc. ofS.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 300. 2 Ibid., p. 458. 



90 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

Miss Helen Vance and George Pelham had be- 
longed at the same time to a society formed for mutual 
aid in the art of writing. She came to a sitting some 
time after it had begun. Mrs Piper, in her normal 
state, had never met her. Nevertheless, George 
Pelham asks her at once, " How is the society get- 
ting on ? " A little later on, the following dialogue 
takes place between Miss Vance and George 
Pelham : " Now, whom do you have to correct your 
writings ? " " We correct one another's." " But do 
they give satisfaction?" "Yes." "What, in their 
corrections ? " " Yes, but not as much as you ; your 
corrections were better than theirs." " Well, that is 
what I am trying to get out of you." " In other 
words, George, you wanted a compliment from me." 
" Oh, bosh, you know me better than that" 

Miss Warner had two sittings with Mrs Piper 1 
five years after George Pelham's death. He had 
known her when she was quite a child, but he had 
not seen her for three years before he died, and in 
eight years a child becomes a tall young girl. Con- 
sequently, at the first sitting, George Pelham did not 
recognise Miss Warner at all. At the second sitting 
he admitted this and said, " I do not think I ever 
knew you very well." "Very little. You used to 
come and see my mother." " I heard of you, I 
suppose." " I saw you several times. You used to 
come with Mr Rogers." " Yes, I remembered about 
Mr Rogers when I saw you before." "Yes, you 
spoke of him." " Yes, but I cannot seem to place 
you. I long to place all my friends, and could do so 
before I had been gone so long. You see, I am 

1 Proc. o/S.P.R., p. 324. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 91 

farther away — every day I get further away from 
you. I do not recall your face ; you must have 
changed." At this moment Dr Hodgson said, " Do 
you remember Mrs Warner ?" " Of course, oh, very 
well. For pity's sake, are you her little daughter?" 
" Yes." " By Jove ! how you have grown ! I 
thought so much of your mother, a charming 
woman." 

George Pelham not only recognises his friends, 1 as 
we have just seen ; he also remembers their opinions, 
their occupations, their habits. James Howard is an 
author. He asks him, " Why don't you write on this 
subject ? " (the future life). Rogers writes also. He 
asks, " What is Rogers writing now ? " "A novel." 
" I don't mean that. Isn't he writing something 
about me ? " " Yes, he is preparing a memoir of you." 
" That is kind of him. One is pleased not to be for- 
gotten. He was always very good to me when I 
was alive." 

He remembers the opinions of his father, and the 
discussions they had upon philosophical questions. 
" I should like to convince my father," he says ; " but 
it will be hard. My mother will be easier." He 
says to James Howard, " Do you remember how we 
used to ask each other for books of certain kinds, 
about certain books, where they were, and you 
always knew just where to find them." Formerly, 
when James Howard and George Pelham were talk- 
ing together in the evening, the first-named habitually 
smoked a long pipe. At a sitting held in the library 
where these conversations used to take place, George 

1 For reports of these sittings see Proc. of S.P.P., vol. viii. pp. 413- 
441. 



92 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

Pelham said to Mr Howard, " Get the long pipe 
and smoke." Katharine is one of James Howard's 
daughters, who plays the violin. Formerly her prac- 
tising used to greatly annoy George Pelham, who 
lived with the Howards. He said to her at a sitting, 
" Katherine, how is the violin ? To hear you play- 
ing is horrible, horrible." Mrs Howard replies, " Yes, 
George, but don't you see she likes her music because 
it is the best she has." " No, but that is what I used 
to say." 

" Marte " is a pseudonym adopted by Dr Hodg- 
son to designate a well-known American writer. He 
is a monist, a partisan of Darwinism, convinced that 
the death of the body is for us the end of all. At a 
sitting George Pelham said to him, " Evolution is all 
right in the real life, as Darwin says, but it goes on 
evoluting in the ideal life, which fact he, of course, 
knew nothing of until he came here." 

George Pelham also recognises objects which have 
belonged to him, principally those which have some 
remembered emotional association. 

John Hart, at the first sitting at which George 
Pelham appeared, gave some sleeve-links he was 
wearing, and asked, " Who gave them to me ? " 
"That's mine. I sent that to you." "When?" 
" Before I came here. That's mine. Mother gave 
you that." " No ! " " Well, father then, father and 
mother together. You got those after I passed out. 
Mother took them, gave them to father, and father 
gave them to you. I want you to keep them. I will 
them to you." All this is correct. 

At another sitting Mrs Howard gives a photo- 
graph. She placed it on the top of the medium's 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 93 

head. " Do you recognise this ? " " Yes, it is your 
summer house ; but I have forgotten the name of 
the town." " Don't you remember D. ? " " Oh, the 
little brick house and the vine, grape-vine some call 
it. Yes, I remember it all ; it comes back as dis- 
tinctly as the daylight. Where is the little out- 
house?" All this is correct. The outhouse which 
George Pelham was surprised not to see was a hen- 
house left just out of the photograph. At another 
sitting Mrs Howard put a book on the medium's 
head. We must not forget that the medium's eyes 
are shut, and the ocular globes upturned. " Do you 
recognise this book ? " " Oh, yes, it is my French 
Lyrics." Needless to add that this was correct. 
George Pelham asks for information on the subjects 
which interested him in life. He asks to have things 
done for him. At the first sitting he said to the 
sitter, John Hart, " Go up to my room, where I 
write. I left things all mixed up. I wish you'd go 
up and straighten them out for me. Lots of names, 
lots of letters. You answer them for me." 

Evelyn is another of Mr Howard's daughters. 
George Pelham had given her a book, and had 
written her name in it. He asks her if she re- 
members it. 

He has not forgotten his former speeches either. 
He was fond of Evelyn, but this did not prevent his 
constantly teasing her. Thus she is weak in mathe- 
matics. At one sitting George Pelham says to her, 
" I won't tantalise Evelyn now ; I used to torment 
her a great deal, but she will forgive me, I know." 
Which does not prevent his adding directly after, 
" Evelyn is a girl that can always tell how much two 



94 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

and two is. You have just learned, haven't you? 
You are not a great one for mathematics, are you ? " 
But he adds quickly, " Now be good, Evelyn. It 
doesn't matter so much about your lessons; being 
good is the most important point of all." 

James Howard had asked George Pelham several 
questions to which the latter had not replied, asserting 
that he had forgotten. On this account James 
Howard still doubted George Pelham's identity. 
One day the former said, " George, tell me something 
that you and I alone know. I ask you, because 
several things I have asked you you have failed to 
get hold of. We spent a great many summers and 
winters together and talked on a great many things 
and had a great many views in common, went 
through a great many experiences together. Tell 
me something now that you remember." The hand 
at once began to write eagerly: the occurrences 
related were so private that they cannot be pub- 
lished. At a given moment the hand wrote 
"Private." Dr Hodgson then left the room. On 
his return James Howard told him that he had 
obtained all the proof he could desire, and that he 
was "perfectly satisfied, perfectly." 

At the first sitting at which George Pelham ap- 
peared, when John Hart was the sitter, George 
spoke suddenly of Katharine, James Howard's 
daughter, and he said something which at the time 
had no meaning for John Hart. "Tell her, she'll 
know. I will solve the problems, Katharine." When 
John Hart reported these words to the Howards 
they were more struck than by anything else. 
During George Pelham's last stay with them he had 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 95 

talked frequently with Katharine upon deep philo- 
sophical questions, such as Time, Space, Eternity, 
and had pointed out to her how unsatisfactory the 
commonly-accepted solutions were. Then he had 
added the words of the communication almost 
textually, " I will solve those problems some day, 
Katharine." Remark that at this time the Howards 
had never yet seen Mrs Piper, that John Hart knew 
absolutely nothing of these conversations, and that 
Dr Hodgson, who took notes at the sitting, did not 
at the time know the Howards or of the conversa- 
tions. 

George Pelham had received a good classical 
education. He was a Humanist. Consequently a 
rather large number of Latin expressions are found 
in his language ; usual, no doubt, with people of his 
education, but with which Mrs Piper is not ac- 
quainted in her normal state. Phinuit, who cannot 
have been a good Latinist, does not employ them 
either. Observation of this fact inspired Professor 
Newbold 1 with the idea of asking George Pelham to 
translate a short fragment of Greek, and he proposed 
the first words which occurred to him ; the beginning 
of the Paternoster: ndrsp jjpav 6 h toT? ohpavoTg. George 
Pelham made some attempts, and finally translated 
" Our Father is in heaven." Professor Newbold 
then proposed a longer phrase, which he composed 
himself on the spot for the occasion : Ojx hn ddvaror 
at yap ruv Qvrjroov -^vyat ^co^v ^ooctv aOdvarov, atdtov, /xaxdptov. 
This means, " There is no death ; the souls of mortals 
really live an immortal eternal happy life." George 
Pelham called to his aid Stainton Moses, who in his 

1 Proc. of S. P. £?.> vol. xiv. p. 46. 



g6 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

lifetime passed for a good Hellenist. Both together 
only succeeded in understanding the first proposition, 
"There is no death." These experiments, at all 
events, prove that Mrs Piper in the trance state can 
understand a little Greek, though in her normal state 
she does not even know the letters. Again, George 
Pelham and Stainton Moses may have known Greek 
tolerably well and have forgotten it : it is an accident 
which has happened to many of us. 

With regard to this translation of Greek, we might 
form another hypothesis. We might suppose that 
the spirits of George Pelham and Stainton Moses — 
if there are spirits — perceiving thought directly, and 
not its material expression, have partly understood 
what Professor Newbold wanted to say, without 
knowing in what language it was expressed. If 
they did not understand wholly and completely, it 
would be because a thought expressed in a foreign 
language has in our minds a certain vagueness. We 
might go further ; we might suppose that Mrs Piper's 
subconsciousness perceives the thought directly, 
independently of the form in which it is expressed. 
Mrs Piper has often pronounced words and short 
sentences in foreign languages. Phinuit likes to say, 
" Bonjour, comment vous portez vous ? Au revoir ! " 
and to count in French. Mme. Elisa, an Italian, the 
dead sister of Mrs Howard, succeeded in writing 
or pronouncing some short sentences in more or less 
odd Italian. I find also at a sitting where the com- 
municator was supposed to be a young Hawaian 
three or four words of Hawaian very appropriate to 
the circumstances. Mrs Piper is ignorant of all this 
in her normal state. I have just said that spirits — 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 97 

if there are spirits — perceive thought directly. They 
themselves tell us this. On the other hand, they do 
not perceive matter, which is non-existent to them. 
This brings me to a new feature of the sittings, 
principally of those with George Pelham. If this 
feature does not increase the proofs of identity, it is 
at least an evidence of the abnormal powers of the 
medium. 1 George Pelham is asked to go and see 
what a certain person is doing at a given time and 
to come back and relate it. He goes, and partially 
succeeds. This is what appears to happen : if the 
act is strongly conceived in the mind of the person 
he is watching, he perceives it clearly ; if it is nearly 
automatic, he perceives it vaguely ; if it is wholly 
automatic, he does not perceive it at all. He often 
says that actions have occurred which have only 
been planned and not executed, at other times he 
reports past actions as present. This is because 
spirits have not, it appears, a clear notion of time. I 
have unfortunately neither time nor space to give 
examples of this. 

Can we say that the communicator George Pelham 
has never made a partially or wholly erroneous 
assertion ? No. But the number of such assertions 
is very small, which was not the case when Phinuit 
reigned alone. Here is one such assertion, at which 
there has been much cavilling ; people have insisted 
on seeing in it the stamp of Mrs Piper and her 
social environment, and not at all the stamp of the 
aristocratic " George Pelham. George Pelham is 
asked, " Could you not tell us something which your 
mother has done?" He replies, 2 " I saw her brush 

1 Proc. of S. P.P., vol. xiii. p. 329. 2 Proc. of S. P.P., vol. xiii. p. 303. 
G 



g8 MRS PIPER 

my clothes and put them away. I was by her side 
as she did it. I saw her take my sleeve buttons 
from a small box and give them to my father. I 
saw her put some papers in a tin box." When Mrs 
Pelham is questioned by letter, she replies, " George's 
clothes were brushed and put away, not by me, but 
by the man who had valeted him." And the hasty 
conclusion is, Mrs Piper on this occasion thought 
herself among her own class. She forgot that Mrs 
Pelham did not brush and put away clothes herself. 
This is perhaps a too hasty triumph. The most 
highly-bred women may occasionally brush and put 
away clothing. Now suppose that what I have said 
above about the way in which spirits perceive our 
actions should be true. George Pelham may have 
seen the project of the action in his step-mother's 
mind, and not its execution by the valet. It may be 
objected that he ought to have supposed she would 
not do it herself. Why ? I do not see it. Perhaps 
he knew that his step-mother was capable, occasion- 
ally, of putting away clothes herself. 

George Pelham is often asked questions which he 
cannot answer. But he does not at all pretend to 
have forgotten nothing. If there is another world, 
spirits do not go there to ruminate on what has 
happened in our incomplete life. They go there to 
be carried away in the vortex of a higher and 
greater activity. If, therefore, they sometimes forget, 
it is not astonishing. Nevertheless, they seem to 
forget less than we do. 



CHAPTER XI 

George Pelham's philosophy — The nature of the soul — The first 
moments after death — Life in the next world — George 
Pelham contradicts Stainton Moses — Space and time in the 
next world — How spirits see us — Means of communication. 

THE communicator, George Pelham, did not confine 
himself to obtaining recognition from his friends ; he 
talked a great deal of philosophy with them, especially 
with Dr Hodgson. Indeed, if he had not done so, 
the omission might have created a doubt as to his 
identity, for in his lifetime he was fond of such dis- 
cussions. But for the present Dr Hodgson has kept 
back these speculations from the other side of the 
grave, thinking quite rightly that no value would 
attach to them until unmistakable evidence had 
been produced for the existence of " another world." 
Still there are to be found among the reports of the 
sittings some fragments of these philosophic theories, 
and they form an interesting subject of study. 

The philosophy may be only that of Mrs Piper. 
But it may on the other hand be the philosophy of 
the discarnate George Pelham, and for that reason 
it is not unworthy of examination. Supposing, how- 
ever, that the assertions made are actually those of an 
inhabitant of the other world who in this world was 

99 



LtfC. 



ioo MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

intelligent, honest and cultivated, the question still 
arises whether we must regard them as expressing 
Absolute Truth. Surely not ; if another world 
exists beyond this one, its inhabitants have mounted 
one step — but one step only — above us on the infinite 
ladder of existence. They do not see the Eternal 
face to face. It is quite possible that they may be 
able to see clearly truths of which we have no 
glimpse, but we are not bound to believe more than 
we like of what they tell us. 

If the existence of the discarnate George Pelham 
is established, a new light is undoubtedly thrown on 
the old problem as to the nature of the soul, a 
problem as old as the world itself. The disciples of 
Plato's Socrates tried to interpret it by the charm- 
ing analogy of the lyre and its harmony ; asking 
whether man may not be compared to a lyre and his 
soul to its harmony, a harmony which ceases to exist 
when the instrument is broken. Using more modern 
terms, we may ask whether the soul is the resultant of 
the forces of the bodily organism, or whether it is the 
indestructible and mysterious motor which produces 
the action of that organism. 

George Pelham declares that the soul is in truth 
the motor, and that the body is merely a machine 
used temporarily by the soul to act upon the obscure 
world of matter. He speaks to this effect : Thought 
exists outside matter and is in no way dependent 
upon matter. The destruction of the body does not 
have as its consequence the destruction of thought. 
After the dissolution of the body the Ego continues 
its existence, but it then perceives thought directly, is 
much more free, and can express itself much more 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 101 

clearly than when it was stifled by matter. The soul 
and thought are one ; thought is the inseparable 
attribute of the Ego or individual soul. On its 
arrival in this world the soul is ready to register 
innumerable new thoughts ; it is a tabula rasa upon 
which nothing has been inscribed. 

This is a noble thought, if true, and one that won- 
derfully widens our narrow outlook. But, as I have 
said, I reserve my right of critical examination. 
Elsewhere George Pelham says, " We have an astral 
facsimile — the words are his — of our physical body, a 
facsimile which persists after the dissolution of the 
physical body." This would seem to be the astral 
body of the Theosophists. But the term " facsimile " 
is perplexing, as I have always believed that the par- 
ticular form which Humanity actually has was 
entirely determined by the laws of our physical 
universe, that it was an adaptation to its surroundings, 
and that if a modification, however slight, were made 
in, for instance, the laws of gravity, the human shape 
would undergo a corresponding variation. Sir 
William Crookes has lately made some interesting 
observations on this subject. But to this question I 
will return again. 

Now, the physics of the next world must be very 
different from the physics of this world, seeing that 
the next world is not material, or at least that its 
matter is excessively subtle. How then should the 
shape we men have in this world persist in the next? 

Now, if we have an astral body which accompanies 
our Ego in the next world, and if that astral body 
consists of a fluid similar to what we suppose ether to 
be, or identical with that ether, this fluid must be 



102 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

matter in some form, though matter obviously sub- 
ject to quite other laws than those of our world of 
palpable substance. Moreover, there is no proof that 
the soul is not the resultant of the organic forces of 
this astral body. If this astral body, as is probable, 
in its turn suffers disintegration, there is no proof 
that the soul survives this second disaggregation. If 
all these suppositions were proved, the old problem 
concerning the nature of the soul would have been 
carried back a stage, but it would not have been 
solved. 

But, as things are, this is, perhaps, to carry specula- 
tion too far. Let us curb our fambition and ask 
George Pelham what are the sensations felt im- 
mediately after death. Everything was dark, he 
says ; by degrees consciousness returned and he 
awoke to a new life. " I could not distinguish anything 
at first. 1 Darkest hours just before dawn, you know 
that, Jim. I was puzzled, confused." This is prob- 
able enough. If things are thus, death must be a 
sort of birth into another world, and it is easy to 
understand that the soul which has been just born 
into that new world cannot see or comprehend much 
in it till some time after such birth. 

James Howard remarked to George Pelham that he 
must have been surprised to find himself still living, 
to which George Pelham replied, " Perfectly so. 
Greatly surprised. I did not believe in a future life. 
It was beyond my reasoning powers. Now it is as clear 
to me as daylight." Elsewhere he says that when he 
found that he actually lived again he jumped for joy. 
This joy is comprehensible enough ; those of us who 

1 Proc, ofS.P.R.y vol. xiii. p. 301. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 103 

are resigned to the prospect of annihilation are few. 
The thought that death is annihilation makes us, 
against all principles of logic, shiver to the very 
marrow. Such a feeling perhaps points to a revolt of 
the soul within that knows itself immortal and cannot 
without a shiver of fear face the idea of non-existence, 
an idea in opposition to its very nature. 

With the impressions of George Pelham may be 
compared those of another communicator called 
Frederick Atkin Morton, who had passed into the 
next world in quite a different way. This Morton 
had lately started a newspaper ; anxiety, overwork, 
and perhaps other causes made him lose his reason. 
His insanity lasted but a short time; in one of its 
attacks he shot himself in the head and was killed 
on the spot. The first time that he tried to com- 
municate, his remarks showed great incoherence ; — no 
matter for surprise if Dr Hodgson's observations on 
this subject are recalled. But his thoughts soon 
became clear, and at the second sitting his com- 
munications were definite enough. This is how he 
relates to his brother Dick his impressions about his 
own death. He does not speak of suicide, an action 
which he probably committed without full conscious- 
ness of what he was doing, but at the end of the 
sitting Mrs Piper's hand wrote the word " Pistol." 
Death had been due to a pistol shot. 1 " When on 
Sunday," he says, " I began to lose my mental equili- 
brium, then suddenly I realised nothing and nobody." 
In answer to the question as to what his next 
experience was he goes on : "I found I was in this 
world. I did not know for the moment where I was 

1 Proc. ofS.P.R.t vol. xiv. p. 18. 



104 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

only I felt strange and freer ; my head was light in 
weight, also my body . . . my thoughts began to 
clear when I observed I had departed from my 
material body. Ever since then I have been trying 
to reach you, Dick. I saw a light and many faces 
beckoning me on and trying to comfort me, showing 
and assuring me I should soon be all right, and 
almost instantly I found I was. Then I called for 
you and tried to tell you all about where and how I 
was, and, with one exception, this is the only chance I 
have had. Now you see I am taking advantage of 
the opportunity." 

After the question of how a man passes into the 
next world, the most interesting one to us is how he 
feels when he gets there. Generally speaking, the 
reports are satisfactory. One of Professor Hyslop's 
uncles, though he seems to have had a happy life 
here, says to his nephew, among other things, 1 " I 
would not return for all I ever owned — music, flowers, 
walks, drives, pleasures of all kinds, books and every- 
thing." Another communicator, John Hart, the first 
sitter to whom George Pelham appeared, said on his 
own first appearance, " Our world is the abode of 
Peace and Plenty." If this is the case, what a pleasant 
surprise awaits us, for in this world we have not much 
experience of Peace and Plenty. But I fear that 
John Hart has exaggerated ; every day the Reaper's 
sickle casts from this world into the other such 
elements of discord, not to reckon those who must 
long ago have been there, that I wonder what means 
are taken to prevent their creating a disturbance. 
However this may be, if when we leave this world we 

x Proc. of S.P.E., vol. xvi. p. 315. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 105 

pass into another, let us hope that the new world will ' 
be a better place than the old one, or else we shall 
have every reason to regret that death is not 
annihilation. 

But George Pelham, in his turn, assures us that 
we do not lose by the change. He died, it will be 
remembered, at the age of thirty-two. When Dr 
Hodgson asked him whether he had not gone too 
soon, he replied with emphasis, " No, Hodgson, no, 
not too soon." 

If, however, spirits are happy, more or less happy, 
according to the spiritualists, as they are more or less 
developed — and there seems nothing inadmissible in 
this theory — we must suppose that their happiness is 
not purely contemplative. One could soon have 
enough of such happiness as that. They are active ; 
they are, as we are, occupied, though we cannot 
understand wherein their occupation consists. That 
this is so is affirmed and reaffirmed in the sittings, 
and we might assume it, even if the spirits did not 
assert it. George Pelham says to his friend, James 
Howard, that he will have an occupation soon. 1 The 
first time that I read this statement, in a review 
which only reproduced a short fragment and in no 
way gave the real effect of these sittings, I remember 
that the impression produced on me was very dis- 
agreeable. How unsophisticated, I thought, must 
these so-called investigators be not to see that such 
a phrase as that cannot come from a spirit ; it bears 
too clearly the stamp of earth ! 

Since then reflection has made me admit that spirits 
might very well also have their occupations ; the 

Proc. of S. P. P., vol. xiii. p. 301. 



106 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

next world, if it exists, must be a sphere of fresh 
activity. Work is the universal law. When George 
Pelham was asked in what consisted the occupa- 
tions of spirits, he replied that they were like the 
noblest occupations of men, and consisted in helping 
others to advance. This reply will doubtless not 
satisfy those who are actuated only by an idle 
curiosity, but it contains a profound philosophic 
truth. If our varied occupations upon earth are 
regarded from a somewhat superior point of view, it 
will be seen that their ultimate end is nothing else 
than the perfection of mankind. Those of us who 
have evolved furthest realise this, and the rest do not ; 
the case must be the same in the next world, though 
George Pelham does not say so. All our efforts and 
exertions are regarded with indifference by nature 
who has no use for them, but the necessities of life 
make men feel that they are brothers, and oblige 
them to polish one another, like the stones of the 
beach rolled to and fro by the waves and rounded and 
polished by rubbing one against another. Willingly 
or not, consciously or unconsciously, we force one 
another to advance and to improve in all respects. 
The world has been, I think with justice, compared 
to a crucible in which souls are purified by pain and 
work and prepared for higher ends. I should not 
like to go as far as Schopenhauer and say that it is a 
mere penal settlement. 

A celebrated English medium, William Stainton 
Moses, in a book well known to spiritualist readers, 
Spirit Teachings, developed, or rather allowed his 
spirit-guides to develop, the theory that souls leave 
this earth taking with them all their desires and all 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 107 

their evil passions. Having no body in the next 
world to enable them to gratify these desires they are 
subjected to a veritable punishment of Tantalus. 
Thereupon they endeavour to satisfy their material 
passions at least, if I may so say, vicariously ; they 
urge on incarnate men, all unaware, to abandon 
themselves to these vices and passions. They incite 
the gambler to play, the drunkard to drink; in a 
word, they push, as far as in them lies, every vicious 
man to the bottom of the abyss created by his own 
vice; crime and debauchery intoxicate them and fill 
them with joy. Further developed and noble souls, 
in spite of all their efforts, are unable to conjure away 
the influence of the undeveloped and evil souls. In a 
word, we have here the old fable of demons and 
angels arranged to suit the doctrines of modern 
spiritualism. It is indeed the old fable with a 
difference ; demons desire the perdition of man from 
jealousy, because being themselves eternally con- 
demned they wish to drag down with them as many 
souls as possible ; the evil souls of Stainton Moses 
desire the perdition of man to gratify their own bad 
inclinations. Demons are spirits, wicked indeed, but 
yet spirits, whereas the evil souls of Stainton Moses 
are only miserable ghosts driven mad by love of 
matter. Certainly everything is possible, as Professor 
Flournoy says, but this theory is somewhat astonish- 
ing, for it seems to make the inhabitants of the next 
world gravitate round our miserable earth, and is like 
the old astronomical theory that placed our little 
globe in the centre of the universe. If there be 
another world, it is hard to believe that its in- 
habitants spend the greater part of their time in 



108 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

attending to us, some of them to harm us and the 
rest to do us good. 

Professor William Romaine Newbold, in a sitting 
which took place on June 19, 1895, asked George 
Pelham what we ought to think of this theory of 
Stainton Moses. 1 

Professor Newbold. — " Does the soul carry with 
it into its new life all its passions and animal 
appetites?" 

George Pelham. — "Oh, no, indeed, not at all. 
Why, my good friend and scholar, you would have 
this world of ours a decidedly material one if it 
were so." 

Professor Newbold. — " The writings of Stainton 
Moses claimed that the soul carried with it all its 
passions and appetites, and was very slowly purified 
of them." 

George Pelham. — " It is all untrue." 

Professor Newbold. — "And that the souls of the 
bad hover over the earth goading sinners on to their 
own destruction." 

George Pelham. — "Not so. Not at all so. I 
claim to understand this, and it is emphatically not 
so. Sinners are sinners only in one life." 

The result of this denial of Moses's doctrine was 
that George Pelham was asked to find Stainton 
Moses and beg him to come himself and communi- 
cate. Here is a fragment of conversation between 
Professor Newbold and the discarnate Stainton 
Moses. 

Professor Newbold. — " You taught that evil spirits 
tempt sinners to their own destruction ? " 

1 Proc. ofS.P.R., vol. xiv. p. 36. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 109 

W. S. MOSES. — " I have found out differently since 
I came over here. This particular statement given 
me by my friends as their medium when I was in 
the body is not true." 1 

Professor Newbold. — "Your second statement 
was that the soul carries its passions and appetites 
with it." 

W. S. Moses. — " Material passions. Untrue. It 
is not so. I believed that we had every desire after 
reaching this life as when in the body, but I find that 
we leave all such behind ; in other words, evil thoughts 
die with the body." 

So on this point the teaching of George Pelham 
differs from that of Stainton Moses. But, says 
Professor Newbold, for the most part they agree 
pretty well. 

Now when we reach this other world it is certain 
that we shall at first be completely at a loss there, 
as all that we here regard as indispensable conditions 
of existence will there be lacking. Spirits say that 
they do not perceive matter which is for them as if 
non-existent, whereas here present-day science asserts 
that outside matter moved by force there is nothing. 
It would be strange if the science of to-morrow were 
to prove that matter is only a sort of temporary 
illusion of mind. Here we conceive nothing outside 
space and time, whereas spirits seem to have but 
confused notions of space and time. Such, in the 
first place, is the view which they constantly assert ; 
and, in the next place, if they are asked, for example, 
how long it is since they died they are generally 

1 In another sitting W. S. Moses says that, as he held this view very 
strongly in life, he felt sure that he had been told it by his spirit-guides. 



no MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

unable to say. In their communications again, they 
often relate as occurring in the present actions that 
have taken place long ago. I have said already that 
George Pelham has often been asked to go and see 
what certain absent persons are doing and to return 
and report it; he has generally been successful, but 
he has sometimes made the curious mistake of taking 
the past for the present. Here is an illustration. 
He is told to go and see what Mrs Howard, absent 
at the time, was doing ; he returns and reports. Dr 
Hodgson writes to ask Mrs Howard what she was 
doing at the time of the sitting, and hears from her 
in reply that she did none of the things reported on 
the day of the sitting, but that she had done them 
all in the course of the afternoon and evening of the 
preceding day. 1 It seems likely that George Pelham 
had read the thoughts of Mrs Howard, and in his 
inability to appreciate time had taken the past for 
the present. 

The same sort of thing seems to occur in the case 
of space. Phinuit, to oblige Professor Newbold,goes 
to find Stainton Moses. Phinuit says that he inhabits 
a great sphere, and that Stainton Moses lives in a 
very distant part of this sphere. But in spite of this 
he brings him back almost at once. When the 
medium is presented with objects likely to attract 
the so - called spirits with whom the sitters are 
anxious to communicate, these spirits for the most 
part arrive at once, no matter where they may have 
died ; John Hart, who died at Naples, communicates 
two days afterwards at Boston. But it is hardly to 
be presumed that the spirits are there waiting for us. 

1 Proc. of S.P.R.) vol. xiii. pp. 305, 306. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH in 

If their appearance can be hastened or delayed by 
sympathy or antipathy, on the other hand what we 
call distance seems not to disturb them in the least ; 
and yet we are perpetually finding in the communi- 
cations such phrases as, " Every day I am getting 
further from you," " Now I am very far away from 
you." But such phrases are probably not to be 
interpreted literally. The spirits go further from 
us as they make progress in the spiritual world and 
doubtless also as the things of this world occupy less 
and less place in their recollections. 

The spirits see us but they do not see our bodies, 
since they do not perceive matter. They see the 
spirit within us but it appears to them more or less 
obscure, as long as it is within the body. " It is 
by the spiritual part of your being that I see you," 
says George Pelham, " that I am able to follow 
you and to tell you from time to time what you are 
doing." 

And what do they think of our life upon earth ? 
Here is a quotation from George Pelham which will 
tell us : 1 " Remember we always shall have our 
friends in the dream life, z.£., your life so to speak, 
which will attract us for ever and ever, and so long 
as we have any friends sleeping in the material 
world ; you to us are more like as we understand 
sleep, you look shut up as one in prison." 

Professor Hyslop had a sister who died as a very 
young child ; she sends a short message to her 
brother saying that he dreams while she lives and 
that she sends him her love. 

Our life then would seem to be but a sleep accom- 

1 Proc. ofS.P.R.y vol. xiii. p. 362. 



112 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

panied by dreams which are sometimes terrible 
nightmares. If this be so we can but hope for 
dawn and waking, and wish soon to hear the crow- 
ing of the cock which will put to flight the phantoms 
of the night. Happy should we be if we had a 
certainty that it would be so ! 

This reminds me of a fine passage in a Spanish 
poet, which I cannot refrain from quoting : " To 
live is to dream ; experience teaches that man 
dreams what he is till the moment of awakening. 
The king dreams that he is a king and passes his 
days in the error, giving orders and disposing of 
life and property. The rich man dreams the wealth 
that is the cause of his anxiety ; the poor man dreams 
the poverty and need from which he suffers. I too 
dream that I am here laden with chains, and in by- 
gone days I dreamt that I was happy. Our dreams 
are but dreams within a dream." 

So our world may be compared with the cave of 
which Plato speaks in the Seventh Book of the 
Republic. In the conversation between Dr Hodg- 
son and George Pelham, when George Pelham 
promised that if he were the first to die and if he 
found that he had another life he would do all that 
he could to prove its existence, they referred to 
the old Platonic myth. In the communications of 
the so-called George Pelham allusion was made to 
the allegory, and that justifies me in briefly recall- 
ing it. 

Plato imagines prisoners who from their birth have 
been enchained in a dark cave in such a way that 
they are not able either to move or to turn their 
heads, and can only look straight in front of them. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 113 

Behind and above the captives a great fire burns, and 
between the fire and the captives men pass to and 
fro carrying in their hands vessels, statues, images of 
animals and plants, and many other objects. The 
shadows of these men and of the objects that they 
carry are thrown upon that wall of the cavern which 
is opposite to the captives, who thus know nothing 
of the external world but these shadows which they 
take to be realities, and they spend their time dis- 
cussing the shadows, naming them and classifying 
them. 

One of the captives is carried off from the gloomy 
place and transported into the external world. At 
first the light dazzles him and he can distinguish 
nothing. But by degrees, as time goes on, his sight 
adapts itself to its surroundings and he learns to look 
upon the stars and moon, and the sun itself. When 
he has been brought back into the cave and again 
sits beside his companions, he takes part in their 
discussions and tries to make them understand that 
what they take for realities are only shadows. But 
they, confident in the results of their lengthy reflec- 
tions on the subject, laugh him to scorn. The same 
thing would happen to a soul which had dwelt for 
a time in the world of spirit and had been brought 
back into the world of matter. 

When Plato's captive is brought back into the cave, 
his eyes, no longer used to half-darkness, can dis- 
tinguish nothing for some time ; if he is questioned 
about the shadows of the passing objects he does not 
see them, and his answers are full of confusion. 
Perhaps something like this happens to the dis- 
carnate spirits who try to manifest themselves to us 

H 



H4 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

by borrowing the organism of a medium. Such at 
least is the suggestion of George Pelham ; in that 
way he would explain the incoherence, the confusion, 
the false statements made by many of the communi- 
cating spirits : x " For us to get into communication 
with you, we have to enter into your sphere, as one 
like yourself asleep. This is just why we make 
mistakes as you call them, or get confused and 
muddled so to put it. I am not less intelligent 
now. But there are many difficulties. I am far 
clearer on all points than I was, shut up in the body. 
' Don't view me with a critic's eye, but pass my 
imperfections by.'" 

* George Pelham also tells us how we may summon 
the spirits of those with whom we desire to com- 
municate. The thoughts of his friends reach him ; if 
he is to come and make himself manifest his friends 
must think of him. He adds that, so far from the 
communications being injurious to ftie communicat- 
ing spirits or the sitters, they are positively to be 
desired. 

On one occasion Dr Hodgson asked what became 
of the medium during the trance. 2 

George Pelham. — " She passes out as your 
ethereal goes out when you sleep." 

Dr HODGSON.— " Well, do you see that there 
is a conflict, because the brain substance is, 
so to speak, saturated with her tendencies of 
thought ? " 

George Pelham. — "No, not that, but the solid 
substance called brain — it is difficult to control it 

1 Proc. o/S.P.P., vol. xiii. pp. 362, 363. 

2 Proc. of S, P.P., vol. xiii. p. 434. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 115 

simply because it is material ; her mind leaves the 
brain empty as it were, and I myself, or other 
spiritual mind or thought, take the empty brain, 
and there is where and when the conflict arises." 

All this is very unintelligible in the present con- 
dition of our knowledge. But here is another passage 
even less intelligible and one which in its naivete 
almost suggests that the speaker is playing with us. 
George Pelham says to his friend James Howard at 
the first sitting at which James Howard was pre- 
sent : x " Your voice, Jim, I can distinguish with 
your accent and articulation, but it sounds like a 
big brass drum. Mine would sound to you like 
the faintest whisper." 

J. Howard. — " Our conversation, then, is some- 
thing like telephoning ? " 

George Pelham. — " Yes." 

J. Howard. — " By long-distance telephone." 

George Pelham laughs. 

Understand who may ! Are these only analogies ? 
One does not know what to think. Another difficult 
thing to understand is the " weakness " which the 1 
spirits complain that they feel, especially towards 
the end of the sittings. George Pelham actually 
says that we must not demand from spirits just 
what they have not got, namely, strength. If the 
spirits mean that the medium's " light " grows weak 
and no longer provides them with the unknown 
something that they require in order to communi- 
cate, why do they not express themselves more 
clearly ? 

It will perhaps be thought that I have dwelt a 

1 Proc. of S.P.I?., vol. xiii. p. 301. 



n6 



MRS PIPER 



little too long on what I have called the philosophy 
of George Pelham. I have thought it best to do so, 
and there is no harm done so long as I leave it to 
my readers to believe as much as they like. 



CHAPTER XII 

William Stainton Moses — What George Pelham thinks of him 
— How Imperator and his assistants have replaced Phinuit. 

FOR those of my readers who are unacquainted with 
spiritualist literature, and in order to facilitate the 
understanding of what follows, I must give a short 
sketch of the life of the English medium, William 
Stainton Moses. He was born in 1839, and died in 
1892. He studied at Oxford, and was then curate 
at Maughold, near Ramsey, in the Isle of Man. His 
great kindness made him beloved by all his par- 
ishioners there. When an epidemic of smallpox drove 
even the doctors away, he remained faithfully at 
his post, caring for bodies and comforting souls. 
But he had precarious health, and was overworked 
at Maughold. He obtained another curacy, where 
there was less work, at Saint George's, Douglas, 
also in the Isle of Man. It was at Douglas that 
the friendship, broken only by death, was formed 
between him and Dr Stanhope Speer. A throat- 
affection soon after prevented his preaching, and he 
left the service of the Church to give himself up to 
teaching. He went to London, where he became 
tutor to the son of Dr Stanhope Speer, who was 

117 



u8 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

living there. Finally, at the beginning of 1871, he 
obtained a mastership in University College School, 
and there he remained till 1889. 

Till 1872 William Stainton Moses knew nothing 
of spiritualism. If he had vaguely heard of it, he had 
no doubt hastened to condemn the new superstition 
which carried off sheep from his flock. 

However, in 1872, Mrs Speer, being ill and con- 
fined to her room, read Dale Owen's book, The 
Debatable Land. The book interested her, and she 
asked Stainton Moses to read it. He did so, but 
only to please his friend's wife. Nevertheless he 
became curious to know how much truth there 
might be in the matter. He visited mediums, and 
took Dr Speer with him, and both were soon con- 
vinced that here was a new force. 

It was at the time when spiritualistic phenomena 
were attracting much attention in the United States 
and England, and when learned bodies were ap- 
pealed to from all sides to put an end to these phan- 
tasmagoria. It was the period when the materialised 
apparition of Katie King appeared and talked to 
numerous spectators who came from widely separ- 
ated places. Sir William Crookes could see her 
and photograph her as much as he pleased ; heedless 
of his environment, he published what seemed to him 
the truth. 

Thereupon the man whose brain had till then 
been considered one of the most lucid and best 
organised which humanity has produced, lost con- 
siderably in the opinion of his contemporaries. But 
no doubt the future will avenge him. 

The Speer family and Stainton Moses now began 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 119 

to hold sittings by themselves. Stainton Moses l at 
once showed himself to be an extraordinarily power- 
ful medium. Neither he nor anybody else had 
suspected this mediumship till now. Many other 
mediumships have been revealed in the same way, 
suddenly, by experiment. This shows that faculties, 
valuable for the study of these disturbing problems, 
may exist in some of us who least expect it 

The physical phenomena which occurred in the 
presence of Stainton Moses were numerous and varied. 

These phenomena cannot be due to the subcon- 
sciousness of Stainton Moses, and they seem to point 
to external intervention more clearly than do the 
communications he has left us. The best known 
of these communications is entitled Spirit Teach- 
ings. It is a long dialogue between self-styled dis- 
incarnated spirits and Stainton Moses. Stainton 
Moses also wrote automatically without being en- 
tranced. Spirit Teachings, among other things, was 
obtained in this way. The medium is still saturated 
with his theological education ; he discusses, he cavils, 
and his spirit-guides show him the absurdity of a great 
part of his beliefs. We know that his robust faith 
began to be shaken by doubt about the time when 
his mediumship revealed itself. If we left the above- 
mentioned phenomena out of consideration, we might 
not unreasonably be tempted to see in these dialogues 
only a doubling of personality ; on one hand the per- 
sonality of the clergyman defending his doctrines 
foot by foot, on the other hand the personality of 

1 For an account of the mediumship of W. Stainton Moses the reader 
s referred to Mr F. W. H. Myers's articles in the Proc. of S. P.P., vol. 
ix. p. 245, and vol. xi. p. 24. 



120 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

the reasoning man formulating his own objections 
to them. 

The self-styled spirit-guides of Stainton Moses 
formed a united group obeying one chief, who called 
himself Imperator. Rector, Doctor, Prudens, were 
his subordinates. Naturally, they asserted they were 
the souls of men who had lived on earth ; the above 
names were borrowed for the circumstance ; their real 
names were revealed to Stainton Moses, who wrote 
them in one of his note-books, but always refused 
to publish them. I beg the reader to observe this 
detail, which will become important later. 

Stainton Moses had the temperament of an apostle 
but not at all that of a man of science. The contents 
of the messages interested him much more .than their 
origin. The former clergyman liked better to dis- 
cuss a doubtful text than patiently to accumulate 
facts while guarding himself in all possible ways 
against fraud. Certainly he was scrupulously hon- 
ourable ; no conscious falsehood ever passed his lips, 
but his temperament makes his interpretations doubt- 
ful, and with reason. He was one of the first mem- 
bers of the Society for Psychical Research, but the 
methods which the Society adopted from the begin- 
ning were not of a kind to please him ; for his part, 
he believed that abundant proofs already existed, 
and he saw no use in minutely examining a large 
number of small facts. 

Dr Speer's son, whom Stainton Moses had taught, 
praises his judgment, his modesty, his inexhaustible 
charity. Modest he really was, and it never occurred 
to him to be vain of the miraculous phenomena which 
occurred in his presence ; he never thought of mak- 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 121 

ing a venal use of his mediumship. Although he 
published his communications, he hardly ever pub- 
lished reports of his phenomena. It was Frederic 
Myers who published these from the note-books of 
the Speer family and of Stainton Moses himself. 
The notes are in agreement, although they were 
made separately, and without any idea of publication. 

The son of Dr Speer asserts that Stainton Moses 
never refused a discussion, and never despised an 
opponent. But, on the other hand, Frederic Myers, 
who knew him well, assures us that he bore contra- 
diction badly, and was quickly irritated by it. The 
manner in which he retired from the Society for 
Psychical Research tends to prove that it is Myers 
who is right. The son of Dr Speer, in his gratitude 
to his former master, must have deceived himself. 

I will now explain the reason of this long pre- 
amble about Stainton Moses. At a sitting which 
took place on June 19, 1895, Professor Newbold, 
conversing with George Pelham, obtained from him 
the enunciation of doctrines which contradicted those 
given by Stainton Moses in Spirit Teachings. Pro- 
fessor Newbold r then asked,— 

" Do you know of Stainton Moses ? " 

George Pelham. — " No, not very much. Why ? " 

Professor Newbold. — " Did you ever know of him 
or know what he did ? " 

G. P. — " I only have an idea from having met him 
here." 

Professor N. — " Can you tell me what he said ? " 

G. P. — " No, only that he was W. Stainton Moses. 
I found him for E. 2 and Hodgson." 

1 Proc. ofS.P.P., vol. xiv. p. 36. 2 Another communicator. 



122 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

Professor N.— " Did you tell Hodgson this ? " 

G. P.— « I do not think so." 

At the sitting on the next day, Professor Newbold 
returns to the charge. 

' Can you bring Stainton Moses here ? " 

G. P.— « I will do my best." 

Professor N. — " Is he far advanced ? " 

G. P. — " Oh, no, I should say not. He will have 
to think for a while yet." 

Professor N. — " What do you mean ? " 

G. P. — " Well, have you forgotten all I told you 
before?" 

Professor N. — "You mean about progression by 
repentance ? " 

G. P.— « Certainly I do." 

Professor N. — " Was not he good ? " 

G. P. — " Yes, but not perfect by any means." 

Professor N. — " Was he a true medium ? " 

G. P. — " True, yes, very true ; his ' light ' was very 
true, yet he made a great many mistakes and de- 
ceived himself." 

Phinuit, sent to find Stainton Moses, ends by 
bringing him. George Pelham warns the sitter 
against the confusions and incoherences of Stainton 
Moses's communications. " When he arrives," says 
George Pelham, " I will wake him up." 

Professor N. — " Is he asleep ? " 

G. P. — " Oh, Billie, you are stupid, I fear, at times. 
I do not mean wake him up in a material sense." 

Professor N. — " Nor did I." 

G. P. — " Well, then, old man, don't be wasting light." 

Professor N. — " I'm not wasting light, but I am 
obliged to find out what you mean." 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 123 

G. P.—" Well, this is what I wish also." 

Professor N. — "Stainton Moses has been nearly 
three years in the spirit. . . . Do you mean to say 
that he is not yet free from confusion ? " 

These explanatory passages would be of great 
value if we were sure that we were not dealing with 
a secondary personality of Mrs Piper. 

Later still, George Pelham returns to the probable 
mental confusion of Stainton Moses, and to the 
necessity for taking certain precautions in order to 
obtain clear communications. He was quite right. 
These sittings, in which Stainton Moses was the 
self-styled communicator, are exactly those which 
make the spiritualist hypothesis most difficult to 
accept. All the exact information given existed 
already in the minds of those present ; all the rest 
was untrue. Stainton Moses had an excellent chance 
of proving his identity. We have said that he had 
written down the real names of his " spirit-guides " 
or " controls " in one of his note-books. At the time 
these sittings were taking place in America, Frederic 
Myers, in England, was studying these note-books 
in order to publish so much of them as he thought 
fit. He knew these names, but I believe he was 
the only person in the world who knew them. 
Stainton Moses was told, "Give us the names of 
your spirit-guides ; it will be a splendid proof. Mr 
Myers knows them, but we do not. We will send 
them to him, and if they are correct we shall no 
longer be able to have a reasonable doubt of your 
identity." The self-styled Stainton Moses seemed 
perfectly to understand what was asked of him ; he 
gave the names, and every one of them was wrong. 



I2 4 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

In October 1896 Dr Hodgson made George Pel- 
ham understand the necessity of obtaining exact 
information from Stainton Moses, in order that the 
problem, which seemed to interest George Pelham 
as much as it did Dr Hodgson, might be solved. 
Stainton Moses then said that he would ask the 
help of his former spirit-guides. The latter com- 
municated directly several times, in November and 
December 1896 and in January 1897. But finally they 
demanded that the " light " of the medium should be 
put at their exclusive disposal. Imperator explained 
that these unconsidered experiments with all sorts of 
spirits — more or less undeveloped and disturbed — as 
communicators, had made Mrs Piper as a medium 
into a machine " worn out," and incapable of being 
really useful. He Imperator, and his friends would 
be able to restore her in time. But they must have 
the right to keep away such communicators as they 
should judge likely to injure her again. Dr Hodg- 
son explained the importance of trying this experi- 
ment to Mrs Piper in her normal state. Mrs Piper, 
docile as usual, consented. The last appearance of 
Phinuit occurred on January 26, 1897. Phinuit 
had formerly said, " They find fault with me, they 
won't understand that I do all I can, but when they 
do not hear my voice any longer they will regret 
me." However, he is not regretted. Whoever the 
controls Imperator, Rector, Doctor and Prudens may 
be, since they have controlled the communications, 
these have acquired a coherence, clearness and 
exactness unknown before ; errors are rare, and 
evident falsehood unknown. Besides, Mrs Piper 
enters the trance differently. Formerly there was 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 125 

more or less painful struggle ; she had violent con- 
vulsions and spasmodic movements ; at present she 
enters the trance quietly, as if she were falling 
asleep. 

If, in truth, Mrs Piper entranced is merely an 
automaton, a " machine," of which use is made to 
communicate between two worlds, it is perfectly 
evident that, on this side as well as the other, it is 
well to have honourable and experienced experi- 
menters. Phinuit was not perhaps wanting in 
experience, but he was assuredly wanting in 
honesty ; or possibly he did not perceive the 
extreme importance of veracity in these matters ; 
he did not lie for the pleasure of lying, but he did 
not hesitate to lie, if needs were, to escape from some 
difficulty. 

The new report of Professor Hyslop, which I 
am about briefly to analyse, will show us the new 
phase of Mrs Piper's mediumship. The results are 
already good. Imperator asserts nevertheless that 
I the " machine " still needs repair, and that he will 
obtain still more wonderful results by-and-by. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Professor Hyslop and the journalists — The so-called "con- 
fession" of Mrs Piper — Precautions taken by Professor 
Hyslop during his experiments — Impressions of the 
sittings. 

The last report 1 we possess of the phenomena 
accompanying Mrs Piper's trance is that of Pro- 
fessor James Hervey Hyslop, of Columbia Uni- 
versity, New York. This report appeared in 
November 1901. The minutes of the sittings, the 
notes, the remarks of the sitter, the discussion of 
hypotheses, the account of experiments made at 
the University in order to throw light on certain 
points, all together make a report of 650 pages of 
close reading. It refers, notwithstanding, only to 
sixteen sittings, of which the first took place on 
December 23, 1898. But the smallest incidents and 
the slightest arguments are scrupulously weighed. 
It is, in short, a work of considerable extent. 

Professor Hyslop has an absolutely sincere and 
very lucid mind. It is a pleasure to follow him 
through this mass of facts and arguments; every- 
thing is scrupulously classified, and the whole is 
illuminated by a high intelligence. Professor Hys- 
lop occupies with good right an eminent place 

1 Professor Hyslop's report is contained in Proc. of S.P.J?., vol. xvi. 
126 



MRS PIPER 127 

amongst the thinkers of the United States. Besides 
his classes, he gives numerous lectures, which are 
well attended. 

The report he has published has been long waited 
for. As he is a man of mark and has long occupied 
himself with Psychical Research, the inquisitive 
journalists on the other side of the Atlantic quickly 
found out that he had been experimenting with Mrs 
Piper. He was interviewed ; he was prudent, and 
contented himself with recommending the reporters 
to study the preceding reports published upon the 
same case. But reporters are not so easily con- 
tented ; they have to satisfy an exacting master in 
the public, which wants to know everything, and 
which would cease to purchase any paper simple 
enough to say, " I have done all I could to get 
information on this point for you, but I have failed." 
The public will have none of such honesty as that, 
though if a falsehood is offered, it is not angry ; in 
the first place, because at the moment it does not 
recognise the falsehood, and in the second, because 
by the time it finds out it is busy over something 
else. Consequently, as they must live, journalists 
find themselves sometimes obliged to invent. So 
the reporters put into Professor Hyslop's mouth 
the following sensational words, " In a year I 
shall be able to demonstrate the immortality of 
the soul scientifically." These words were repro- 
duced by the greater number of the American 
papers and by a large number of English ones. 
Specialist publications in France in their turn 
commented on them. It will be understood with 
what eagerness the report was expected after this 



128 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

by all men interested in psychical studies. They 
have not been disappointed. Professor Hyslop is 
too modest for such unbounded pretension ; he 
knows that the great problem will not be solved 
at one stroke, nor by one man. " I do not claim," 
he says, " to demonstrate anything scientifically, not 
even the facts I offer." This phrase does not at 
all resemble the declaration put into his mouth. 
But if he has not definitively and scientifically 
proved the immortality of the soul, he has ap- 
proached the problem very nearly and thrown a 
vivid light on more than one point. In any case 
the journalists have advertised him thoroughly, 
perhaps without intending it. 

Speaking of journalists, I must relate another 
quite recent incident, which is interesting to us, 
as it concerns Mrs Piper personally. One of 
the editors of the New York Herald interviewed 
Mrs Piper and on October 20, 1901, published an 
article somewhat speciously entitled " The Confes- 
sions of Mrs Leonora Piper." In this article it was 
stated that Mrs Piper intended to give up the work 
she had been doing for the S.P.R. in order to devote 
herself to other and more congenial pursuits, that it 
was on account of her own desire to understand the 
phenomena that she first allowed her trances to be 
investigated and placed herself in the hands of 
scientific men, with the understanding that she 
should submit to any tests they chose to apply, 
and that now, after fourteen years' work, the subject 
not being yet cleared up, she felt disinclined for 
further investigation. Her own view of the phe- 
nomena was expressed in this article as follows: — 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 129 

" The theory of telepathy strongly appeals to me 
as the most plausible and genuinely scientific solu- 
tion of the problem. ... I do not believe that 
spirits of the dead have spoken through me when I 
have been in the trance state. ... It may be that 
they have, but I do not affirm it. . . . I never heard 
of anything being said by myself during a trance 
which might not have been latent in my own mind 
or in the mind of the person in charge of the sitting, 
or in the mind of the person trying to get communi- 
cation with someone in another state of existence, or 
of some companion present with such a person, or in 
the mind of some absent person alive somewhere 
else in the world." 

In the Boston Advertiser of October 25, 1901, there 
appeared a statement dictated by Mrs Piper to a re- 
presentative of the paper, saying that she had made 
no such statement as that published in the New York 
Herald to the effect that " spirits of the departed do 
not control " her, and later in the Boston Journal for 
October 29, 1901, there appeared an account of inter- 
views with Dr Hodgson and Mrs Piper, in which Mrs 
Piper stated that though she had said " something to 
the effect that " she " would never hold another sitting 
with Mr Hodgson," and that she "would die first" to 
a New York Herald reporter the summer before, when 
she gave the original interview, she now intended, 
regardless of whatever may have been said, to go on 
with the present arrangement with Dr Hodgson and 
the Society as formerly. She still held and ex- 
pressed the view that the manifestations are not 
spiritualistic, and felt that the telepathic theory is 
more probable than the spiritualistic hypothesis. 

I 



130 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

It will be seen that in none of these reports is there 
any justification for the somewhat sensational use of 
the word " Confessions " in the original article. Mrs 
Piper made no statements, as the use of that word 
suggests, concerning the source of her knowledge ; 
she expressed her preference for one of two hypo- 
thetical explanations of the origin of that knowledge. 
No question was raised in the original article as to 
Mrs Piper's honesty or as to the genuineness of her 
trance phenomena ; on the contrary she is represented 
by the reporter of the New York Herald as holding 
a view of those phenomena which asserts that they 
are not fraudulent. She expresses her personal pre- 
ference for the telepathic hypothesis rather than the 
spiritualist hypothesis as an explanation of them ; on 
this point it should be remembered that the medium 
is not in a more favourable position for forming an 
opinion than those who sit with her, since she does 
not remember what passes while she is in trance, and 
is therefore dependent for her knowledge on the 
reports of the sitters. 

The allegation of the New York Herald as to her 
intention to discontinue the sittings was unfounded ; 
after a suspension of some months owing to the 
state of her health, she gave a sitting to Dr Hodgson 
on October 21, the day after the article in the Herald 
appeared, and it was then arranged to resume the 
sittings after a further interval of three months. This 
has been done, and Mrs Piper gave sittings to Dr 
Hodgson all through the spring of last year, and is 
still doing so through the winter of 1902-1903. 

The reader will excuse this digression on a subject 
which made some stir at the time, and is interesting 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 131 

as throwing light on the medium's own attitude 
towards her trance phenomena. 

To return to Professor Hyslop's report. 

Professor Hyslop told only his wife and Dr 
Hodgson of his intention to have sittings with Mrs 
Piper. The days were fixed, not with Mrs Piper in 
the normal state, but with Imperator, the chief of the 
present controls, while she was in trance. Now we 
must never forget that Mrs Piper has no recollection 
of what happens during the trance. Professor 
Hyslop's name was not given to Imperator ; Dr 
Hodgson called him the " four times friend," because 
Professor Hyslop had at first asked for four sittings. 
I should not call this a transparent pseudonym. 

Professor Hyslop had once been present at one of 
Mrs Piper's sittings, and his name had been pro- 
nounced. Although there seemed to be small chance 
of her recognising him, as the sitting had taken place 
six years before, and Professor Hyslop did not then 
wear a beard as he now does, he put on a mask while 
he was in a closed carriage at some distance from 
Mrs Piper's house. He kept on his mask during the 
first two sittings, and then the precaution became 
useless, because his father's name was pronounced 
by Mrs Piper at the end of the second. Dr Hodgson 
presented him as Mr Smith, which name is given to 
all new sitters. Professor Hyslop never spoke before 
Mrs Piper in her normal state, except twice to utter 
short sentences, and he took pains to change his 
voice as much as possible. He avoided all contact 
with the medium throughout all the sitting. Most of 
the facts were obtained from the communicators 
without previous questioning. When Professor Hys- 



132 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

lop was obliged to ask a question, he did so in such 
a way that it did not contain a suggestion of the 
answer. To prevent Mrs Piper's seeing him dur- 
ing the sitting, he kept always behind her right 
shoulder, the easiest position too for reading the 
writing. 

But when we recollect that Mrs Piper's head is 
always buried in pillows during the trance, we shall 
think this a superfluous precaution. 

As I have said in the preceding chapter, Phinuit no 
longer manifests. This is what now appears to take 
place on the " other side." Rector places himself in 
the " machine," and it is he who produces the auto- 
matic writing. This Rector seems to have had much 
experience of these phenomena. The communicator 
comes close to Rector and speaks to him, in whatever 
manner spirits may speak. Imperator remains out- 
side the " machine," and prevents the approach of all 
those likely to injure it, or who have nothing to do 
with the sitter. Besides, before he allows a com- 
municator to enter the " machine," he gives him 
advice as to what he should do, and helps him to 
arrange and clear up his ideas. Imperator's two 
other helpers, Doctor and Prudens, appear but rarely. 
George Pelham appears sometimes, when his services 
are needed. 

The communicators were few in number during 
Professor Hyslop's sixteen sittings. They were, his 
father, Robert Hyslop, who gave much the most 
important communications ; his uncle, Carruthers ; his 
cousin, Robert Harvey MacClellan ; his brother 
Charles, who died in 1864, aged four years and a 
half; his sister Annie, who also died in 1864, aged 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 133 

three years ; his uncle, James MacClellan ; and lastly, 
another MacClellan named John. 

Professor Hyslop's father, Robert Hyslop, is the 
communicator who takes up the greater part of 
the sittings. But he cannot remain long in the 
" machine," he complains of having his ideas confused, 
of suffocating or getting weak ; for example, he says, 
" I am getting weak, James, I am going away for a 
moment ; wait for me." During these absences 
Imperator sends another member of the family in his 
place " so that the light may not be wasted." It 
would thus seem that the "weakness" which the 
spirits complain of is only a feeling they have when 
they have been in contact with the " machine " for a 
certain time ; Imperator says that then they are like 
a sick and delirious man. This explains the words of 
George Pelham, " You must not ask of us just what we 
have not got — strength." But it is indispensable to 
say that the former communicators did not explain 
enough about this weakness; and they were not 
sufficiently well inspired to go out when they felt 
it coming on. Dr Hodgson at last, having often 
remarked this semi-delirium of the communicators 
towards the end of a sitting, when the light was 
failing, succeeded in suggesting to them to go away 
when they felt themselves getting weak. The possi- 
bility of this suggestion is interesting to those who 
prefer the hypothesis of telepathy. 



CHAPTER XIV 

The communications of Mr Robert Hyslop — Peculiar 
expressions — Incidents. 

After we have read the report of Professor Hyslop, 
weighed the slightest facts with him, discussed the 
arguments for and against with him, we cannot be 
surprised at his having ended by adhering to the 
spiritualist hypothesis; in other words, we cannot 
be surprised that, in spite of his previous prejudice, 
he should have ended by exclaiming, " I have been 
talking with my father, my brother, my uncles. 
Whatever supernormal powers we may be pleased 
to attribute to Mrs Piper's secondary personalities, 
it would be difficult to make me believe that these 
secondary personalities could have thus completely 
reconstituted the mental personality of my dead 
relatives. To admit this would involve me in too 
many improbabilities. I prefer to believe that I 
have been talking to my dead relatives in person ; 
it is simpler." This is the conclusion at which 
Professor Hyslop has arrived, and he takes the 
reader with him, in spite of himself. As may be 
imagined, I do not pretend to do the same in a 
hurried sketch like the present. Here, as was the 
case with George Pelham, the incidents quoted are 
only examples selected from a great number ; some 
important detail of the said incidents may even be 

i34 



MRS PIPER 135 

accidentally omitted. If the forgotten detail lays the 
incident open to some great objection, the reader 
must blame me only for it, and turn to Professor 
Hyslop's book for himself. 1 

Professor Hyslop's father, Mr Robert Hyslop, was 
a private person in the strictest sense of the word ; 
he never did anything to attract public attention to 
him ; he did not write in the papers, and never, or 
hardly ever, lived in towns. He was born in 1821, 
and lived on his farm in Ohio till 1889, when he 
went into a neighbouring State. He returned to 
his old home in August 1896, ill with a sort of 
cancer of the larynx. The old home then belonged 
to his brother-in-law, James Carruthers, and he died 
there on the 29th of the same month. In i860 he 
had contracted a spinal affection, the result of over- 
exertion, and this had degenerated, some years later, 
into locomotor ataxy ; he lost by degrees the use of 
one of his legs and used a crutch ; there was after- 
wards an improvement, but he could never walk 
without a stick. In 1876 he had a slight attack of 
apoplexy, which affected his hearing, one ear being 
quite deaf. Three years before his death he further 
had the misfortune to lose his voice, probably from 
paralysis of the larynx. A year before his death 
a fresh affliction was added to all the others ; he 
thought it was catarrh, but it was probably cancer 
of the larynx ; and it was accompanied by frequent 
spasms which threatened his life. 

In short, for thirty-five years at least, Mr Robert 

1 Proc. of S.P.R., vol. xvi. In what follows here there is no 
attempt to give the actual words of Professor Hyslop's communi- 
cators Trans. 



136 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

Hyslop was an invalid. His life was by necessity 
passed indoors, or at least on his farm. This life 
was necessarily without events calculated to attract 
a stranger's notice. There was consequently very 
little possibility that the medium could obtain infor- 
mation about him by normal means. But when an 
obscure man like Mr Robert Hyslop returns from 
the Beyond to establish his identity by relating a 
number of small facts, too slight and unimportant to 
have been observed outside his intimate circle, such 
a man furnishes us with a much stronger presumption 
in favour of a future life than a personage in public 
life could do. Even if the latter only reported 
incidents of his private life, it would be easier to 
suppose that the medium had been able to procure 
them. During nearly all his life, but principally 
during the last twenty years, the thoughts of Mr 
Robert Hyslop turned on a small number of subjects 
— his solicitude for his family; the administration of 
his farm, which gave him much care ; the fulfilment 
of his religious duties, in which he never failed ; and 
lastly, political events, which much interested him, 
because they naturally reacted upon his private 
affairs. Consequently the greater part of the facts 
I shall quote belonged to one or other of these four 
categories of his preoccupations. 

But, to begin with, it will be useful to speak of a 
point which characterises an individual as clearly as 
his features do — I mean his speech. Each of us has 
his own language, his familiar expressions ; each of 
us expresses himself in his own way under given cir- 
cumstances. When Bufifon said " the style is the 
man," he expressed an absolute truth. When some- 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 137 

body talks to us by telephone, without giving his 
name, we say, without a shade of hesitation, " It is 
So-and-so. I know him by his style." I repeat that 
everybody has this individuality of expression ; it is, 
however, less marked in educated people. But men 
only slightly cultivated use stereotyped expressions, 
above all when they are growing old ; the language 
of some of them is almost entirely composed of 
aphorisms and proverbs. If Mr Robert Hyslop did 
not altogether belong to this class, he yet, his son 
tells us, used particular expressions, and always the 
same in analogous cases ; some of them indeed were 
altogether peculiar to him. 

Now, when he communicates through Mrs Piper, he 
uses the same language that he used when alive. 
Professor Hyslop has incessantly occasion to remark, 
" This expression is quite like my father ; he would 
have used it when he was alive in such a case." 
There is even a passage of the communications so 
characteristic in this way that it is nearly too much 
so ; it would almost suggest fraud. I will reproduce 
one of these passages. 1 " Keep quiet, don't worry 
about anything, as I used to say. It does not pay. 
You are not the strongest man, you know, and health 
is important for you. Cheer up now and be, quite 
yourself. Remember it does not pay, and life 
is too short there for you to spend it in worrying. 
What you cannot have, be content without, but do 
not worry, and not for me. Devoted you were to me 
always, and I have nothing to complain of except 
your uneasy temperament, and that I will certainly 
help." 

1 Proc. of S.P.J?., vol. xvi. p. 40. 



138 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

When a father has repeated the same advice in 
the same terms hundreds of times in his life, and 
when, after his death, he repeats it again through an 
intermediary, it must certainly be difficult to say, 
" That is not he ; it is not my father." 

I should much like to give the reader the greatest 
possible number of these small facts, which convince 
us almost in spite of ourselves. But it is impossible 
to do so without surrounding them with commen- 
taries indispensable to bring out all their importance. 
Thus, Mr Robert had a horse named Tom, an old 
and faithful servant. It had grown too old to work, 
but he would not kill it. He pensioned it, so to 
speak, and left it to die a natural death on the farm. 
At one sitting he asks, " Where is Tom?" and as 
James Hyslop did not understand what Tom he was 
speaking of, the communicator added, "Tom, the 
horse, what has become of him ? " 

Mr Robert Hyslop wrote with quill pens, which he 
trimmed himself; he had often trimmed them for his 
son James. He recalls this detail about the quill 
pens at one of the sittings. 

He was very bald, and had complained of feeling 
his head cold during the night. His wife made him 
a black cap which he wore once. At one of the 
sittings he spoke of this cap. James Hyslop, who 
had been away from home a long time, had never 
heard of any black cap. But he wrote to his step- 
mother, who corroborated the statement. 

At another sitting the communicator, Robert 
Hyslop, said that there were always two bottles on 
his desk, one round and one square. Professor Hyslop 
was ignorant of this detail, as of the preceding. His 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 139 

step-mother, when questioned, had difficulty in re- 
membering this, but his brother recalled it at once ; 
the round bottle held ink and the square one con- 
tained gum. 

Another time Robert Hyslop asks, " Do you re- 
member the penknife I cut my nails with ? " " No, 
father, not very well." " The little penknife with the 
brown handle. I had it in my vest and then coat 
pocket. You certainly must remember it?" "Was 
this after you went west ? " " Yes." Professor 
Hyslop was unaware of the existence of this pen- 
knife. He wrote separately to his step-mother, 
brother and sister, asking them if their father had 
possessed a brown-handled penknife with which he 
cut his nails, without telling them why he wanted 
this information. All three replied, " Yes, we have 
it still." But it appears that Mr Robert Hyslop did 
not keep the knife either in his coat or waistcoat 
pockets, but in his trousers pocket. 

These little facts will suffice as examples. I will 
go on to more important ones. 

Mr Robert Hyslop had a son who had caused him 
much anxiety all his life. He had often talked of 
these anxieties to his favourite son James, and had 
died carrying them with him into the grave. He 
speaks of them repeatedly during the sittings exactly 
as he did in life. " Don't you remember, James, that 
we often talked of your brother and the trouble he 
gave us ? Don't worry about it any more, all will go 
well now, and if I know that you do not worry I 
shall be all right." 

He remembers all the members of his family and 
names them correctly, except for two odd mistakes 



140 MRS PIPER- AND THE SOCIETY 

of which I shall speak later. He alludes to incidents 
in the lives, and traits in the characters of each of 
them. He sends them expressions of affection, 
" Have I forgotten anybody, James, my son ? I 
should not like to forget anybody." He specially 
asks after his youngest child, Henrietta ; he wants 
to know if she has succeeded in her examinations, 
and he expresses delight when he hears that, on the 
whole, life promises well for her. 

Mr Robert Hyslop was an orthodox Calvinist ; he 
belonged to the small, very strict sect of Associate 
Presbyterians and refused to join the United Presby- 
terian Church in 1858. He was extremely rigid in 
religious matters. When he caused his son James to 
be educated, he hoped the latter would become a 
minister, though he left him free choice. When he 
saw his son modify his religious beliefs he was very 
much pained. By degrees, however, he became re- 
signed. It is easy to understand from all this that 
religious preoccupations were in the foreground in 
his mind. He often talked of religion to his family, 
he read the Bible and numerous commentaries on it, 
and sometimes, rather than allow his family to go t< 
the church of a less orthodox sect, he himself preached 
to them at home. Consequently, if he had not alluded 
to his former religious life during the sittings, the 
omission might have caused a grave doubt of his 
identity. But this is not the case ; he constantly 
alludes to his ancient religious ideas. 

At one of the first sittings he says, for example, 
" Do you remember what my feeling was about this 
life ? Well, I was not so far wrong after all. I felt 
sure that there would be some knowledge of this life? 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 141 

but you were doubtful, remember you had your own 
ideas, which were only yours, James." 

This last phrase, " You have your own ideas," 
Professor Hyslop remarks, had been often repeated 
to him by his father in his lifetime. " He meant 
that I was the only one of his children who was 
sceptical, and this was true." Robert Hyslop's former 
religious ideas were the cause of a strange incident. 
One day Dr Hodgson said to him, " Mr Hyslop, you 
ought to look for my father and make friends with 
him. He had religious ideas like yours. I think 
you would understand each other very well, and I 
should be pleased." At a following sitting the com- 
municator said to Dr Hodgson, " I have met your 
father; we talked, and we liked each other very 
much, but he was not very orthodox when he was 
alive." Dr Hodgson's father was really a Wesleyan 
— that is to say, he belonged to a very liberal sect. 
But in another place Robert Hyslop adds, " Ortho- 
doxy does not matter here ; I should have changed 
my mind about many things if I had known." In 
another sitting he says to his son, alluding to the 
telepathic hypothesis, " Let that thought theory alone. 
I made theories all my life, and what good did it do 
me ? It only filled my mind with doubts." In short) 
it appears that Robert Hyslop, the rigid Calvinist, has 
greatly modified his views since he has been dis- 
incarnated. 

At the last visit Professor Hyslop paid to his 
father, in January or February 1895, a l° n g conversa- 
tion took place between them on religious and philo- 
sophical subjects. Professor Hyslop spoke of his 
psychical studies. The possibility of communication 



142 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

between the two worlds was discussed at length, 
and Swedenborg and his works were mentioned. 
During the sittings Robert Hyslop constantly returns 
to this conversation, which had made a profound 
impression on him ; much more profound than would 
have been expected, considering his religious views. 
He recalls the points which were discussed by him 
and his son one after another, and adds, " You re- 
member I promised to come back to you after I 
had left the body, and I have been trying to find an 
opportunity ever since." Now, no such promise had 
been made explicitly. But James Hyslop had 
written to his father on his deathbed; "Father, when 
all is over, you will try to come back to me." 
Robert Hyslop must from that moment have re- 
solved to return if possible ; and he must have be- 
lieved he had told his son so, which was not the 
case. 

When he was living in Ohio, Mr Robert Hyslop 
had a neighbour named Samuel Cooper. One 
day Cooper's dogs killed some sheep belonging to 
Robert Hyslop. An estrangement followed, which 
lasted several years. At one of the sittings in which 
Dr Hodgson represented Professor Hyslop, he asked 
a question which the latter had sent him in writing. 
Professor Hyslop hoped the question would turn his 
father's attention to the incidents of his life in Ohio. 
The question was, " Do you remember Samuel Cooper, 
and can you say anything about him ? " The com- 
municator replied, " James refers to the old friend I 
had in the West. I remember the visits we used to 
make to each other well, and the long talks we had 
concerning philosophical topics." At another sitting, 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 143 

when Dr Hodgson was again alone, he returned to 
the same idea. " I had a friend named Cooper who 
was of a philosophical turn of mind and for whom I 
had great respect, with whom I had some friendly dis- 
cussion and correspondence. I had some of his letters 
. . . you will find them." Another time, when Pro- 
fessor Hyslop was present, he said, " I am trying to 
remember Cooper's school." The next day he returns 
to the point, " You asked me, James, what I knew 
about Cooper. Did you think I was no longer friend 
of his ? I had kept some of his letters ; and I think 
they were with you." In all this there was not a 
trace of Samuel Cooper, and Professor Hyslop did 
not know what to think. He therefore put a direct 
question in order to bring his father back to the point 
he had in mind. " I wanted to know if you re- 
membered anything about the dogs killing sheep ? " 
" Oh, I should think I did . . . but I had forgotten all 
about it. That was what we had the discussion 
about. . . . Yes, very well, James, but just what you 
asked me this for I could not quite make out as he 
was no relation of mine ... if I could have recalled 
what you were getting at I would have tried to tell 
you. He is here, but I see him seldom." This 
episode is interesting. All that Robert Hyslop said 
at first about Cooper has nothing to do with Samuel 
Cooper, but is entirely true of an old friend of his, 
Dr Joseph Cooper. Robert Hyslop had really had 
many philosophical discussions with him, and they 
had corresponded. Professor Hyslop had perhaps 
heard his name, but did not know that he was an old 
friend of his father. It was his step-mother who told 
him this, in the course of an inquiry he made amongst 



144 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

his relatives to clear up doubtful incidents in the sit- 
tings. We see that disincarnated beings are capable 
of misunderstanding as well as ourselves. 

But the following is the most dramatic incident. 
Professor Hyslop, remembering that his father had 
thought his last illness catarrh, while he himself 
believed it to be cancer of the larynx, asked the 
communicator a question aimed at bringing up the 
word "catarrh." He asked, "Do you know what 
the trouble was when you passed out ? " The double 
meaning of the word "trouble" caused a curious 
misunderstanding, which the telepathic hypothesis 
will find it difficult to explain. 

The communicator replied in distress, " No, I did 
not realise that we had the least trouble, James, ever. 
I thought we were always most congenial to each 
other. I do not remember any trouble — tell me 
what it was about ? You do not mean with me, do 
you ? " " Father, you misunderstand me. I mean 
with the sickness." " Oh, yes, I hear — I know now. 
Yes, my stomach." "Yes, was there anything else 
the matter ? " " Yes, stomach, liver and head — 
difficult to breathe. My heart, James, made me 
suffer. Don't you remember what a trouble I had 
to breathe ? I think it was my heart which made 
me suffer the most — my heart and my lungs. Tight- 
ness of the chest — my heart failed me ; but at last I 
went to sleep." A little further on he says, " Do you 
know, the last thing I recall is your speaking to me. 
And you were the last to do so. I remember seeing 
your face; but I was too weak to answer." 

This dialogue at first disconcerted Professor 
Hyslop. He had tried to make his father tell the 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 145 

name of the malady from which the latter thought 
he suffered — catarrh. It was only when he read over 
the notes of the sitting, a little later, that he per- 
ceived all at once that his father had been describing 
the last hours of his life in the terms habitual to 
him. Professor Hyslop had been mistaken again. 
The doctor had noticed pain in the stomach at 7 a.m. 
The heart action began to decline at 9.30; this was 
shortly followed by terrible difficulty in breathing, 
and death followed. When his father's eyelids fell, 
James Hyslop said, " He is gone," and he was the 
last to speak. This last incident seems to indicate 
that consciousness in the dying lasts much longer 
than is believed. 

Soon after Professor Hyslop asked his father if he 
remembered some special medicine he had sent him 
from New York. The communicator had much 
trouble in remembering the very strange name of this 
medicine, but ended by giving it, though incorrectly 
spelled. 

During the first fifteen sittings Professor Hyslop 
had asked as few questions as possible, and when 
he was obliged to do so, he had so expressed them 
that they should not contain the answer. But at 
the 16th sitting he abandoned this reserve inten- 
tionally. He wished to see what the result would 
be if he took the same tone with the communicator 
as is taken with a friend in flesh and blood. Pro- 
fessor Hyslop says, " The result was that I talked 
with my disincarnated father with as much ease as 
if I were talking with him living, through the tele- 
phone. We understood each other at a hint, as in 
an ordinary conversation." They spoke of everything 

K 



146 MRS PIPER 

— of a fence which Robert Hyslop was thinking of 
repairing when he died; of the taxes he had left 
unpaid ; of the cares two of his children had caused 
him, one of whom had never given him much satis- 
faction, while the other was an invalid ; of the election 
of President M'Kinley and of many other things. 

Can it be said that there were no inexact state- 
ments made by the communicator during all these 
sittings ? There are some, but very few. I shall 
speak of them in the following chapter. In any case, 
there is no trace of a single intentional untruth in 
the whole sixteen sittings. 






CHAPTER XV 

The " influence " again — Other incidents — Statistics. 

At this point I must return to a fact which is sur- 
prising on any hypothesis we may prefer : the utility 
of presenting to the medium objects which have 
belonged to the person from whom we wish to 
obtain the supposed communications. Phinuit used 
to say that he found the " influence " of the dead 
persons on these objects, and the " influence " was all 
the stronger if the object had been worn or carried 
long, and if it had passed through few hands ; 
different successive " influences " seem to weaken one 
another. I have said that we are totally ignorant of 
the nature of this " influence," but I have also said 
that it might not improbably be supposed to consist 
of vibrations left by our thoughts and feelings upon 
material objects. However this may be, Phinuit 
seemed to read this " influence," and draw from it 
the greater part of the information he gave. Gener- 
ally, in spite of his affirmations to the contrary, he 
did not appear to be in direct relation with the com- 
municators at all. Since the disappearance of the 
Phinuit regime and the appearance of that of Imper- 
ator, the presentation of small objects is still of use ; 
but it must be remarked that it has never been in- 
dispensable, and that communicators often appear 

147 



148 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

without having been attracted by any " influence." 
But under the present system the information 
received appears to be much less read from the " in- 
fluence"; there is much more sense of the real 
presence of the communicators. Of what use, then, 
are the small objects given to the medium ? Neither 
the controls nor the communicators have explained, 
which is a pity. Under the new system managed by 
Imperator and his helpers such small articles seem 
chiefly useful for " holding " the communicator, for 
preventing his going away, and for maintaining a 
certain cohesion in his thoughts. Rector constantly 
repeats, " Give me something to keep him and clear 
up his ideas." The communicator would apparently 
need a point de repere in order to remain at the 
desired place, and this point de repere would be 
furnished him by some object he has often used, the 
"influence " left on which he seems to perceive more 
clearly than anything else. According to George 
Pelham, we may also suppose that the communicator 
somehow perceives the mind of the sitter, but this 
mind is imprisoned in matter, and greatly clouded 
by it ; the communicator only recognises the mind 
of the sitter when it is functioning actively, if I may 
thus express it ; when the sitter is thinking, and, 
above all, thinking of the communicator. This is 
why, when the communicator perceives that his 
ideas are becoming confused, he constantly says 
reproachfully to the sitter, " Oh ! why don't you 
speak ? Say something to me, help me. You want 
me to work for you, but you will not do anything 
for me." The dead cousin of Professor Hyslop, 
Robert MacClellan, says to him, for example, " Speak 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 149 

to me, for Heaven's sake. Help me to reach you." 
Analogous passages are very numerous. 

I return to Professor Hyslop's report. The most 
important communicator after his father during the 
sittings was his uncle Carruthers, whose name, how- 
ever, was always mangled by Rector, and given as 
Clarke or Charles. This uncle had died only twenty 
days before the first sitting. 1 At his first communi- 
cation he inquires anxiously about his wife Eliza, 
Robert Hyslop's sister, whom his death had left 
desolate. " It is I, James," he says to the inquirer. 
" Give my love to Eliza ; tell her not to get dis- 
couraged, she will be better soon. I see her often in 
despair." Professor Hyslop asks, " Do you know 
why she grieves ? " " Yes, because I left her ; but I 
did not really leave her. I wish I could tell you all 
I would like . . . you would not think I had left 
entirely. Will you comfort her ? She ought not to 
be left lonely." " Yes, I will comfort her." " I am 
so glad!" At that time Professor Hyslop did not 
guess that his aunt was so completely alone and in 
such deep despair. He only found this out on 
inquiry. 

I will quote another incident of" Uncle Carruthers' " 
communications, because on account of its stamp of 
vivid realism it is one of those which the telepathic 
hypothesis does not explain satisfactorily. Mr Car- 
ruthers suddenly perceives the presence of Dr 
Hodgson and says, "You are not Robert Hyslop's 
son, are you? You are not George." 2 Dr Hodgson 

1 See Professor Hyslop's Report, Proc. of S.P.R., vol. xvi. p. 90, etc., 
for " Carruthers." 

2 Name of one of Professor Hyslop's brothers. 



150 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

replies, " No, I am not George." " No, James, I know 
you very well, but this one" (speaking again to 
Dr Hodgson), " Did you know the boys ? Did you 
know me ? " 

I shall only quote one more incident of these 
interesting sittings. The communicator this time is 
Professor Hyslop's brother Charles, who died in 1864 
aged four and a half. Robert Hyslop's last child 
had been born long after Charles's death. "James, 
I am your brother Charles. I am happy. Give my 
love to my new sister Henrietta. Tell her I shall 
know her some day. Our father often talks of her." 
A little further comes this curious phrase, " Our 
father would much like you to have his pictures, if 
you are still in the body, James!' 

I have said there were some inexact statements, 
but they are very few. I will quote two concerning 
proper names. 

The family name of " Uncle Carruthers " could 
never be given properly. He was always called 
Uncle Charles or Clarke. The error is probably 
attributable to Rector, to whom the name Carruthers 
was not familiar. 

The other mistake is odder still, though it may 
also be attributed to Rector. Robert Hyslop's 
second wife was named Margaret, familiarly called 
Maggie. Now, although it was impossible to mis- 
understand when Robert Hyslop was talking of his 
wife, this name Maggie never came correctly. Pro- 
fessor Hyslop waited a long time without rectifying 
the mistake ; he waited for the communicator to per- 
ceive it and correct it himself, but this spontaneous 
correction was not made. At last he wanted the 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 151 

matter cleared up, and Dr Hodgson explained that 
the name of Professor Hyslop's step-mother had not 
been given. Rector, failing to understand, gave up 
his place to George Pelham, who began by adminis- 
tering a tolerably sharp scolding to the sitters. 
" Well, why do you not come out and say, Give me 
my step-mother's name, and not confuse him about 
anything except what you really want ? By Jove ! 
I remember how you confused me, and I don't want 
any more of it. I am going to find out, and if your 
step-mother has a name you shall have it." George 
Pelham went out of the " machine" and returned 
shortly, saying, " I do not see any reason for anxiety 
about Margaret." Margaret was really the name 
asked for, but one would have expected to obtain it 
in its more habitual form, Maggie. However, it is 
easy to understand that Robert Hyslop should not 
have given the familiar name of his wife to a stranger 
like George Pelham. 

While Professor Hyslop was preparing his report, 
a number of his friends who knew of his researches 
asked him what proportion of truth and error he had 
met with in these manifestations. This frequently- 
repeated question suggested to him the idea of 
making tables in which this proportion should be 
made clear at a glance. This kind of statistics would 
be important for the class of persons who think 
themselves stronger- minded than the rest, and who 
tell you, " I only believe in the eloquence of figures." 
Such people do not realise that battalions of figures 
are like battalions of men, not always so strong as is 
supposed. 

However, Professor Hyslop took all the "inci- 



152 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

dents" of statements made by the communicators 
and classed them according to the amount of truth 
or error they contained. He then divided the 
incidents into factors. I will give an example which 
will help me to define later on what Professor Hyslop 
means by incident and factor x ; " My Aunt Susan 
visited my brother." This is an incident, or state- 
ment of a complete fact. This incident is composed 
of four factors which are not necessarily connected 
with one another. The first is my aunt, the second 
the name Susan, the third the visit, the fourth my 
brother. Therefore an incident may be defined as a 
name, a conception or a combination of conceptions 
forming an independent fact; it may be again a 
combination of possibly independent facts forming a 
single whole in the mind of the communicator. The 
factors would be the facts, names, actions, or events 
which do not necessarily suggest each other, or 
which are not necessarily suggested by a given name 
or fact. 

Naturally, in tables constructed on these lines, the 
facts cannot be classified according to their import- 
ance as proofs ; they can only be reckoned as true or 
false. Thus incidents which have only a restricted 
value as proofs are on a level with others which are 
in themselves very valuable as proofs. This is really 
the weak point of these statistics. The proofs need 
to be examined one by one, and not as a whole. 

However, the tables have one advantage ; the 
greatest sceptic, after a glance at them, can no longer 
invoke chance, the great Deus ex machind of the 
ignorant and indolent. 

1 Proc. o f S.P.R., vol. xvi. p. 115. 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 153 

Professor Hyslop has constructed a table for each 
sitting, and a table of the sittings as a whole. I 
cannot reproduce these tables for the readers, who 
would require the notes of the sittings to understand 
them. I shall only give the definite results. 

Thus, out of 205 incidents, 152 are classed as 
true, 37 as indeterminate, and only 16 as false. Out 
of the 927 factors composing these incidents, 717 are 
classed as true, 167 as indeterminate, and 43 as false. 1 

It should be said that Professor Hyslop has 
perhaps overestimated the number of false and 
unverifiable incidents. Many incidents or factors 
classed as false or unverifiable have been later found 
to be exact. And besides, the incidents of a trans- 
scendental and consequently unverifiable nature 
might have been omitted from these tables. But 
in this case again it has been thought better to give 
the false and doubtful facts full play. The reader 
must draw from these results whatever conclusion 
seems to him the most correct. 

1 Proc. of S.P.R., vol. xvi. p. 121. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Examination of the telepathic hypothesis — Some arguments 
which render its acceptance difficult. 

I HAVE mentioned in passing what should be under- 
stood by the word telepathy. I shall repeat my 
explanation ; it is necessary that the reader should 
have it well in mind, as in this chapter I am about 
to examine the telepathic hypothesis and endeavour 
to find out if it will cover the facts which we are 
studying. By telepathy is here meant, not only the 
power of obtaining information from the conscious- 
ness and subconsciousness of the sitters on the part 
of the secondary personalities of Mrs Piper, but also 
their power to read the consciousness and subcon- 
sciousness of persons somewhere or anywhere else on 
earth, no matter where, distance in no way increasing 
the difficulty of this reading. This is evidently among 
hypotheses a wide and far-reaching one, and yet, if 
we reject the spiritualistic hypothesis, there is no 
other which will cover all the facts. 

The following arguments here briefly indicated are, 
with others, developed at length in Professor Hyslop's 
book. I shall not again go over those which circum- 
stances have necessitated my explaining with suffi- 
cient clearness before in the course of this work. 

*54 



MRS PIPER 155 

To begin with, what is the origin of this tele- 
pathic hypothesis ? Is it justified by the facts of 
experimental or spontaneous observation among 
psychologists ? Certainly not ; if we only reckoned 
the experiments and observations of official psycho- 
logy, the hypothesis of telepathy, as we understand 
it, would be almost unfounded. This hypothesis 
is in reality founded on our ignorance; we may 
admit it temporarily, because we are ignorant of the 
latent powers of the human mind, and because we 
have every reason to think these latent powers great 
and numerous. I think that the first wide use of it 
was made in the famous book by Gurney, Myers, and 
Podmore, Phantasms of the Living. The telepathic 
hypothesis might very well be admitted as an ex- 
planation of the facts recorded in that book, although 
the spiritualistic hypothesis would explain them as 
well, or even better. But when we are considering 
other facts, such as those of Mrs Piper's trance, for 
example, the telepathic hypothesis, in order to 
explain them, must be stretched beyond permitted 
limits. 

In the first place, with regard to reading the 
consciousness of those present, it would seem that, 
if we were dealing with telepathy, the so-called 
communicator ought generally to bring out the facts 
of which the sitters have been thinking most intently. 
But this hardly ever happens ; in Professor Hyslop's 
sittings it never happens. Certainly many of the 
incidents related were in the consciousness of the 
sitters, but the latter were not thinking about them 
till the communicator recalled them. 

For the same way, if we were dealing with tele- 



156 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

pathy, it is to be supposed that the communicators 
would be the persons whom the sitters expect. Now 
this is far from being the case. In the fifteen years 
during which Mrs Piper's mediumship has been 
studied, a great number of communicators have 
appeared about whom nobody was thinking. Pro- 
fessor Hyslop, among others, says that he has met 
with several communicators whom he did not in the 
least expect. Others whom he expected did not 
appear. It is a fact worthy of remark that in Pro- 
fessor Hyslop's sittings only those persons appeared 
who were capable of telling something of a nature 
to prove their identity ; the others seem to have 
been systematically put aside by Imperator, even 
when information concerning them was abundant in 
the consciousness and subconsciousness of the sitter. 

It would seem that, if we were dealing with tele- 
pathy, the self-styled communicators would most 
easily utter the least remote ideas of the sitters' 
minds ; the nearest, most vivid ideas ought to appear 
first. Now this is far from being the case. It seems 
to make no difference to the communicator whether 
the idea is familiar or otherwise to the minds of the 
living. 

When it is a question of facts entirely unknown to 
the sitters and known only to persons living at a 
great distance, this distance might be expected to 
affect telepathic mind-reading ; nothing in nature 
authorises us to neglect this law of distance. We can 
only conceive the telepathic process as a propulsion 
of waves through space ; these waves should decrease 
with distance ; the contrary is absolutely inconceiv- 
able. Now this does not happen ; if the fact exists 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 157 

only in the consciousness of a person who is at the 
time at the far ends of the earth, it makes no differ- 
ence in the precision of the details. If an analogy 
should be made between telepathy — as we must 
conceive it, to explain the phenomena — and wireless 
telegraphy, Mrs Piper entranced must be regarded as 
a mere coherer of the telepathic waves. But this 
analogy is non-existent; wireless telegraphy is 
far from being unaffected by distance, and besides, 
when the coherer functions, it is because another 
instrument is emitting particular waves. When a 
fact known only to a distant person is reported, as in 
Mrs Piper's phenomena, it rarely happens that the 
distant person was actively thinking of the fact, 
which was lying unnoticed in the lowest strata of his 
consciousness. When the experimenter makes his 
inquiries at the conclusion of the sitting, it is often 
found that a definite effort on the part of the absent 
person is required before the fact is recalled to 
memory. 

It would be well to reflect before we grant to 
telepathy a power of omniscience, independent of all 
known laws. 

Another well-observed fact, opposed to the tele- 
pathic theory, is the selection made amongst inci- 
dents by the communicator. If we were dealing with 
telepathy, the secondary personalities of the medium 
would sometimes be mistaken, make blunders, record 
facts which the so-called communicator could never 
have known, but which the sitter alone knows well. 
Now this never happens. The reported facts are 
always common to at least two consciousnesses, that 
of the communicator and that of the sitter, or that of 



158 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

the communicator and that of a distant person. The 
inaccuracies prove nothing against this argument ; if 
they are wilful falsehoods they simply prove that the 
communicator is a liar, and not that he is a secondary 
personality of Mrs Piper. If the reported facts are 
unverifiable, this does not prove that they are 
inexact. 

If the telepathic theory expresses the truth, we 
must grant an almost infinite power to telepathy. 
This supposition is indispensable to account for the 
facts. Then how shall we understand the errors and 
confusions of the communicators ? How can an 
infinite power seem at times so limited, so finite, 
when the conditions remain unchanged ? On the 
other hand, the lapses of memory and confusions are 
quite explicable on the spiritualistic theory ; we can- 
not reasonably think that a change so great as death 
should not induce some disturbance of mind, at least 
temporarily, or should not greatly weaken certain 
groups of memories which, in the new surroundings, 
have no longer any practical use. 

A change of communicators has always been fre- 
quent, but was especially so in Professor Hyslop's 
sittings. Mr Robert Hyslop constantly says to his 
son, " James, I am getting weak ; wait for me, I am 
coming back." And then another communicator 
appears on the spot. The telepathic hypothesis can- 
not explain this fact ; it would seem quite natural 
that the communicator should be always the same. 
To explain it, another hypothesis — that of suggestion 
on the part of the sitter — must be added to the tele- 
pathic hypothesis. But the spiritualistic hypothesis, 
on the other hand, explains this perfectly well, even 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 159 

though we may be compelled to reckon with the 
complications which the admission of the existence 
of another world may introduce. 

The existence of the self-styled intermediaries be- 
tween sitter and communicator is another fact which 
does not fit in with the telepathic theory. Formerly 
Phinuit was the most common intermediary ; then 
George Pelham collaborated with him ; in Professor 
Hyslop's sittings, and, I believe, in all subsequent 
sittings since the installation of the Imperator regime, 
the intermediary is Rector. It is he who presides at 
the functioning of the " machine," because he is par- 
ticularly competent — so say the communicators. 
These intermediaries have very defined and life-like 
characters. Phinuit, George Pelham and Rector are 
as unlike each other as possible. What, on the tele- 
pathic hypothesis, has had the power to create them ? 
Mrs Piper's secondary personalities should have 
incarnated the communicator without intermediary. 
In order to understand this ephemeral reconstitution 
of a consciousness which has for ever vanished, we 
should have to allow that the scattered elements of 
this consciousness had temporarily grouped them- 
selves around the point de repere formed by the 
secondary personality of Mrs Piper. We should then 
see how difficult it is to explain the presence of these 
intermediaries. But if, on the other hand, we accept 
the spiritualistic hypothesis as well founded, we must 
admit that these intermediaries account for their 
presence very plausibly. 

Here is another argument, which, I think, is very 
strong, against the hypothesis of telepathy. Sub- 
jects in the hypnotic state, and the secondary person- 



160 MRS PIPER 

alities which appear in this hypnotic state, according 
to the precise and decisive experiments made by- 
modern science, have an extremely definite notion 
of time. If you tell a hypnotised subject to perform 
an action in a year, at such an hour and minute, he 
will never fail, so to speak, although when he is 
awakened there remains in his memory no trace of 
the order. Now the communicators, in the pheno- 
mena we are studying, have an extremely vague 
notion of time, because, they say, time is not a con- 
cept of the world in which they live. How is it that 
telepathy, which can do so much, owns itself incap- 
able, or nearly so, of determining the moment when 
an action has been performed ? What prevents it 
from reading the idea of time, as well as any other 
idea, in the minds of the persons present, since the 
notion of time is as clear and precise in them at 
least as any other notion? 

To conclude, I should say that we are entirely 
ignorant of the point where the powers of telepathy 
begin and end. What I have just said makes the 
telepathic hypothesis an unlikely explanation ; but, 
as Boileau said long ago, " Le vrai peut quelque fois 
n'etre pas vraisemblable " — Truth may sometimes be 
unlikely. 



CHAPTER XVII 

Some considerations which strongly support the spiritualistic 
hypothesis — Consciousness and character remain un- 
changed — Dramatic play — Errors and confusions. 

The unity of character and consciousness in the 
communicators is one of the reasons which most 
strongly support the spiritualistic hypothesis. If we 
were dealing with Mrs Piper's secondary person- 
alities, the first difficulty would be found in their 
great number. I do not know the exact number of 
communicators who have asserted their appearance 
by means of her organism. But several hundreds 
may be found in the Reports of the Society for 
Psychical Research, and they are certainly far from 
being all mentioned. Now each communicator has 
kept the same character throughout, to such an ex- 
tent that, with a little practice, it is possible to recog- 
nise the communicator at the first sentence he utters, 
if he has already communicated. Some of the 
communicators only appear at long intervals, but 
nevertheless they remain unchanged. But, on the 
telepathic hypothesis, it is not easy to understand 
that a self-styled communicator, a merely ephemeral 
consciousness reconstituted out of the scattered 
recollections of the sitters, should be thus reconsti- 
tuted only at long intervals, suddenly, often without 
l 161 



162 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

apparent cause, and always with the same character- 
istics. This unity of consciousness and character is 
particularly evident in the controls — that is, in such 
of the communicators as have appeared uninter- 
ruptedly for years, on account of their acting as 
intermediaries for others, and helping them with 
their experience. If it cannot reasonably be ad- 
mitted that the occasional communicators are only 
secondary personalities of the medium, the impossi- 
bility must be extended to the controls. Either all 
the communicators are, without exception, secondary 
personalities, or none of them are ; for all give the 
same impression of intense life-likeness and reality. 
If they are indeed secondary personalities, science 
has hitherto studied none like them. I have already 
sketched Phinuit's character, which has remained 
consistently the same during twelve years. The 
reader should also have a sufficiently clear notion of 
George Pelham's individuality, which is also con- 
sistent ; even now, when George Pelham appears, we 
find him unchanged. 

The individualities of the present controls are even 
more marked, and not less consistent. None of those 
who, up to the present time, have communicated 
through Mrs Piper have in the least resembled 
Imperator and his assistants. The principal traits 
of Imperator's character are a profound and sincere 
religious sentiment, much gravity and seriousness, 
great benevolence, an infinite pity for man incarnate 
on account of the miseries of this life of darkness 
and chaos ; and with this, an imperious temper, so 
that he does well to call himself Imperator ; he 
commands, and will be obeyed, but he wills only the 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 163 

right. The other spirits who gravitate around him 
— Rector, Doctor, Prudens, and George Pelham — 
pay him profound respect. This character of Im- 
perator is quite the same as we find in the works of 
Stainton Moses. Those who decline to accept the 
spiritualist hypothesis on any terms may say that 
Mrs Piper has drawn the character from this source. 
She must at least know the book we have mentioned 
— Spirit Teachings. When the effort to communicate 
with Stainton Moses was made, and nothing was 
obtained but incoherence and falsehood, Dr Hodgson, 
wishing to discover what influence the normal Mrs 
Piper's knowledge of Stainton Moses's works might 
have upon the secondary personality calling itself 
Stainton Moses (if we are dealing with secondary 
personalities), took her a copy of Spirit Teachings. 
She read it, or it is to be concluded she did so, but 
there was no result, and no effect upon the com- 
municator who called himself Stainton Moses. 
Nevertheless, I repeat, it may be asserted with 
some probability that Mrs Piper took the character 
of Imperator from this source. But then, from 
whence did she take the other characters? 

Imperator and his friends speak in a distinctive 
biblical style. Generally, at the beginning of the 
sittings, Imperator either utters a prayer himself or 
dictates one to Rector, who reproduces it. Here is a 
specimen. " Holy Father, we are with Thee in all 
Thy ways, and to Thee we come in all things. We 
ask Thee to give us Thy tender love and care. 
Bestow Thy blessings upon this Thy fellow-creature. 
Help him to be all that Thou dost ask him. Teach 
him to walk in the path of righteousness and truth. 



164 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

He needs Thy loving care. Teach him in all things 
to do Thy holy will . . . and we leave all else in Thy 
hands. Without Thy care we are indeed bereft. 
Watch over and guide his footsteps and lead him 
into truth and light. Father, we beseech Thee so to 
open the blinded eyes of mortals that they may 
know more of Thee and Thy tender love and care." 
Among the phrases which ring familiarly to English 
ears we notice one peculiarity, and one that con- 
stantly recurs. Imperator calls God " Father," and 
yet, when he commends man to God, he calls him 
God's fellow-creature, His neighbour, and not His 
creature. Evidently Imperator's idea of God differs 
from ours; it would seem that he thinks us an 
emanation from the Divine, eternal as the Divine 
itself. 

Many readers may not be inclined to attach much 
value to Imperator's prayers. They will take them for 
one of the diabolical inventions of which secondary 
personalities are capable. Evidently, if we take them 
apart from the rest, this is the most plausible ex- 
planation; but the character and ideas of Imperator 
must be considered as a whole. I can assure my 
readers that there is nothing diabolical about him. 
If Stainton Moses and Mrs Piper have created him, 
they have created a masterpiece ; Imperator inspires 
respect in the most sceptical. 

There is another aspect of the phenomena which 
telepathy does not explain ; the dramatic play. 
The personages at the other end of the wire act, as 
far as we can judge, with all the appropriateness and 
distinctive characteristics of reality. There are inci- 
dents of this dramatic play, which telepathy cannot 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 165 

explain, in nearly all the sittings. I have given some 
of them in passing, and will now give some more 
examples. At M. Bourget's second sitting Mrs Pit- 
man, whom I have mentioned before, suddenly 
appears, and speaks nearly as follows : 1 " Monsieur, I 
come to offer you my help. I lived in France and 
spoke French fairly well when I was living. Tell me 
what you want, and I can perhaps help you to com- 
municate with this lady." In order to understand 
the appropriateness of this intervention we must 
remember that George Pelham, who was acting as 
intermediary, had complained at the beginning of the 
sitting that the communicating spirit spoke French 
and that he did not understand her. 

One day George Pelham is asked for information 
about Phinuit, and is about to give it. But Phinuit, 
who is manifesting through the voice while George 
Pelham is doing so in writing, perceives this and 
cries, " You had better shut up about me ! " And the 
spectators witnessed a sort of struggle between the 
head and the hand. Then George Pelham writes, 
" All right, it is settled ; we will say no more about it." 
During a sitting in which the sitter's wife gave 
proofs of identity of a very private nature to her 
husband she said, " I tell you this, but don't let that 
gentleman hear." " That gentleman " could not be Dr 
Hodgson, who had left the room ; it was the invisible 
George Pelham who was habitually present at the 
sittings at this period. 

On April 30, 1894, Mr James Mitchell has a 
sitting. 2 Phinuit begins by giving him appropriate 

1 Evidently addressing George Pelham. 

2 Proc. ofS.P.R., vol. xiii. p. 519. 



i66 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

advice about his health. He ends by saying, " You 
worry, too." Then he adds, " There's a voice I hear 
as plainly as you would a bell rung, and she says, 
1 That's right, doctor, tell him not to worry, because 
he always did so — my dear husandb — I want him to 
enjoy his remaining days in the body. Tell him I 
am Margaret Mitchell, and I will be with him to the 
end of eternity, spiritually.' " 

The communicators often ask one or more of those 
present to go out of the room, and they give one or 
other of the following reasons, according to circum- 
stances. The first is that very private information is 
about to be given. I have quoted an example in 
speaking of George Pelham, when James Howard 
asked him to tell something which only they two 
knew. George Pelham, preparing to do so, begins 
by asking Dr Hodgson to leave the room. How 
oddly discreet for secondary personalities ! On other 
occasions certain persons are asked to go out tem- 
porarily, because, say the controls, " You have relations 
and friends who want very much to communicate 
with you, and they prevent all communication by 
their insistence and their efforts." 

On a certain occasion Professor Hyslop rises and 
goes to the other end of the room, passing Mrs Piper, 
upon which George Pelham, apparently offended, 
writes, " He has passed in front of Imperator ! Why 
does he do that ? " 

It would need a volume to recount all the little 
analogous incidents which telepathy does not explain. 
These will do as examples. Will it be said that 
these small dramas resemble the creations of the same 
kind which occur in delirium or dreams ? But in the 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 167 

first place, in delirium and dreams, the spectator does 
not realise, as he does here, the presence of persons 
who have given many details tending to prove their 
identity. Again, the real cause of these creations of 
dream and delirium is unknown to us. We might 
assert, without being fanciful, that sickness is only 
their opportunity and not their cause. Lastly, a third 
group of facts, which strongly militates in favour of 
the spiritualist hypothesis, consists of the mistakes 
and confusions. This would probably not be the 
opinion of a superficial observer; many take these 
errors and confusions as a reason for entirely rejecting 
the spiritualist hypothesis; generally because they 
have a strange notion of a "spirit," without any 
analogy in nature. Deceived by absurd and anti- 
quated theological teaching, they imagine that the 
most pitiable drunkard, for example, becomes a being 
of ideal beauty and omniscience from the day he is 
disincarnated. It cannot be so. Our spirits, if we 
have them, must progress slowly. When they leap 
into the great unknown they do not at the same time 
leap into perfection ; they were finite and limited, and 
do not become immediately infinite. Disincarnated 
man, like incarnated man, has lapses of intelligence, 
memory and morality. The existence of these 
lapses very well explains the greater part of the 
mistakes in the communications. I have no room to 
develop this idea, but the reader can do it easily. I 
will only quote one example of lapse of memory. Mr 
Robert Hyslop said he had a penknife with a brown 
handle, which he carried first in his waistcoat pocket 
and afterwards in his coat. On inquiry, it was dis- 
covered that he was mistaken, and that he really 



168 MRS PIPER 

carried it in his trousers pocket. What man living 
has not made a hundred such mistakes ? In order to 
explain the phenomena we are studying by the 
telepathic hypothesis, we must suppose that tele- 
pathy has infinite power with which no obstacle can 
interfere. Then why does it make mistakes ? And 
why does it make just the mistakes that an imperfect, 
finite spirit would make? Must we suppose that 
Dame Telepathy is a mere incarnation of the demon 
of fraud and deceit? 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Difficulties and objections — The identity of Imperator— Vision 
at a distance — Triviality of the messages — Spiritualist Philo- 
sophy — Life in the other world. 

Up till now I have said a great deal of evil of tele- 
pathy. I believe that I have demonstrated, not that 
the theory is false, but that it is an unlikely ex- 
planation of the facts. Shall we say, then, that the 
spiritualistic hypothesis, the only reasonable one 
after the dismissal of telepathy, can be accepted with- 
out difficulty and without objections? Not at all. 
Many objections, more or less serious, are still made 
to the spiritualistic hypothesis. To my mind there 
is only one that is serious ; I will speak of it in con- 
clusion. Many of the others are raised by persons 
who have a merely superficial acquaintance with the 
problem; their arguments are more polemical than 
scientific. 

To begin with, some of them want to know why 
the controls, Imperator, Doctor, Rector, Prudens, 
conceal themselves under these pseudonyms. If 
they are, as they say, disincarnated spirits, who for- 
merly lived in bodies, why do they not say who 
they were? Does not their silence on this point 

169 



170 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

indicate that they are only secondary personalities of 
the medium ? 

This objection is not very serious. In the first 
place, the controls told Stainton Moses their names. 
If they do not wish these names revealed, it is with- 
out doubt for excellent reasons, which it is not difficult 
to imagine. There is every indication that these 
controls belonged to a generation considerably re- 
mote from ours; their language, the turn of their 
minds, and some of their assertions, all point to 
this. If they were well-known men, and had re- 
vealed their names, the critics would merely see a 
reason the more for crying fraud. They would say, 
" The medium has read all that, and repeats it to 
us in hypnosis." If, on the other hand, they were 
obscure persons, and had given information about 
their lives, the information would be unverifiable. 
And then the sceptics would cry on the spot, " Folly ; 
these are the inventions of the medium's secondary 
personality." The controls may have still other 
reasons for not revealing themselves to us. This 
life, when once it has been left behind, may seem 
to the spirit to be a more or less painful nightmare. 
There is nothing astonishing in the fact that he does 
not care to recall to others the part he played in this 
nightmare, even if the part were a distinguished one. 
We ourselves know nothing but this life ; we do not 
admit that there is any other. Therefore we all 
wish to shine in it like meteors, if possible. Possibly 
disincarnated spirits, seeing things from a higher 
point of view, think otherwise. In short, the con- 
trols, Imperator, Rector, Doctor and Prudens, may 
refrain from speaking of their former life simply 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 171 

because they are wise. Would it not have been 
wiser of Phinuit to hold his tongue than to tell us 
a mass of improbabilities? 

Amongst those who study these phenomena 
there are many who see in the triviality of 
the greater part of the messages a strong pre- 
sumption against the spiritualist hypothesis. Some 
of these messages are signed, it is true, by illus- 
trious names — though that is not the case with 
Mrs Piper. But this regrettable fact may be 
variously explained. In the first place, there may 
be rogues, charlatans and fools on both sides, since 
it is probable that the soul passes from this world 
to the other just as it is, and that, if it progresses at 
all, it progresses slowly. How many individuals see 
in spiritualism only a means of putting forward their 
wretched personalities or of exploiting their contem- 
poraries ! Such persons would not shrink from 
representing their lucubrations as communications 
from the next world ; they would sign them with 
the most august of names if to do so would further 
their designs. Finally, it is not even necessary to 
suppose that these messages are due to dishonesty ; 
the number of mystifiers may be at least as great on 
the other side as on this ; a sort of law of affinity 
which seems to rule the world of spirits may cause 
these lower beings to be attracted by uncultured 
mediums, while the great spirits are repelled by 
them. It would be these larvae of the other world 
who give the messages which disconcert when they 
do not scandalise us. But the man of science should 
not be rebuffed by these messages which, in spite of 
their contents, are important, if they result in irre- 



172 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

sistible proof of the fact that there exist outside of 
us and around us intelligent beings resembling 
ourselves. 

But when we are dealing with developed spirits, 
who have begun by giving proofs of their identity, 
it is not true that the messages are always trivial. 
They often contain ideas of much breadth of view 
and elevation. The form is generally defective, but 
those who have studied Mrs Piper's phenomena will 
be indulgent to the form, and sometimes even to the 
matter. The spirit in contact with the medium's 
organism suffers, as I have said several times, from 
a kind of delirium ; besides which the organism only 
responds to his efforts imperfectly. " My dear friends," 
says George Pelham, " do not look at me too critic- 
ally ; to try to transmit your thoughts through the 
organism of a medium is like trying to crawl through 
a hollow log." In short, the difficulties are enormous. 

It may very well be that great spirits have really 
been the authors of very poor messages. It has 
happened to each of us to make poetical or other 
compositions in our dreams which we have thought 
admirable ; we say in delight, " What a pity I shall 
not be able to remember that when I wake ! " But 
sometimes we do remember, and then we smile with 
contempt at what had delighted us during sleep. 
Now the communicators constantly repeat that they 
are dreaming while they are in the atmosphere of 
the medium. " Everything seems so clear to me," 
says Robert Hyslop to his son, " and when I try to 
tell you, James, I cannot." 

These considerations prove that we must not hasten 
to conclude, with Professor Flournoy, that if there is 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 173 

a future life it is one of wretched degeneration, one 
more misery added to all the others which overwhelm 
us in this miserable universe. 

No ; as Professor James says, in this world we live 
only at the surface of our being ; if death is not 
annihilation, then it is an awakening. It does not 
follow that the life of the other world is not higher 
and more intense than this, because communication 
with it is difficult. 

Another serious objection to the spiritualist hypo- 
thesis is the philosophy with which certain too eager 
persons have connected it. Spiritualism, which should 
at present be but the mere beginning of a science, is, 
according to them, already a philosophy for which 
the universe holds no secrets. How should such 
puny creatures as ourselves hope to solve the 
problems of the universe by a priori reasoning? 
All that we can reasonably hope, is to wrench 
from nature some of the secrets nearest to us, 
surrounding ourselves with a thousand precautions 
in order not grossly to deceive ourselves. 

I rank the spiritualistic philosophy with other 
philosophies. Perhaps some of its dicta proceed 
from spirits, if spirits exist, but the system as a 
whole most surely does not. But then, it will be 
said, the people who have elaborated this philosophy 
must have been impostors. No, not inevitably; I 
will even venture to say that imposture is unlikely. 
The key to the mystery may be found in other 
characteristics of humanity. 

The most formidable obstacle to the admission of 
the spiritualist hypothesis is in the messages which 
tend to represent the other world, in which, it appears, 



174 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

matter is not perceived, and space and time are un- 
known, as being all the same a servile copy of this, 
or a sketch of it. If Phinuit or another control is 
asked to describe a communicator, the description is 
generally given with exactness, and is the same there 
as it was here ; sometimes the communicator even 
goes so far as to wear the same clothes, made of the 
same material. But these descriptions are without 
importance, as it may be replied that the communi- 
cators or controls give these details purely to prove 
identity. However, I know of no message in which 
the communicator has been frank enough to say, 
" Of course you may suppose that the form I have 
here is not the same as I had in your world." Or 
again, " The idea of form differs totally in our world 
and in yours ; I cannot make you understand what 
that idea is here, so it is of no use to question me." 
Unfortunately neither communicators nor controls 
speak thus ; they all say or allow it to be supposed 
that the human form is the same in both worlds. 

But when action and events in that world are 
represented as being the same as in this, then our 
credulity cries out in remonstrance. That a deceased 
doctor should tell us that he continues to visit his 
patients, a painter that he continues to daub canvas, 
is more than we can admit. But, it may be explained, 
the doctor and the painter are temporarily delirious ; 
they do not know what they are saying. Un- 
fortunately these passages are too numerous to be 
always attributed to delirium. Certain communi- 
cators say, with all the gravity in the world, and 
when they seem in full possession of themselves, 
that they breathe, live in houses, listen to lectures, 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 175 

and that a deceased child is beginning to learn, to 
read. This is an enormous difficulty, I repeat. I 
point it out without trying to solve it ; I am unable 
to offer a plausible explanation. Professor Hyslop 
has tried, but I do not think he has succeeded. 



CHAPTER XIX 

The medium's return to normal life — Speeches made while the 
medium seems to hover between the two worlds. 

In Mrs Piper's case, the moments which precede the 
actual quitting of the trance offer, at least at present, 
a special interest. I think it well therefore to dwell 
on this point a little. To avoid endless circumlocu- 
tions, I shall speak as if the spiritualistic hypothesis 
were proved. Indeed, whatever the future fate of 
this hypothesis may be, and in spite of the serious 
objection spoken of in the last chapter, it is, I believe, 
the only one that can be reasonably adopted for the 
moment. 

When the sitting is over and the automatic writing 
has ceased, Mrs Piper begins to return gradually to 
her normal state. She then utters with more or less 
distinctness some apparently disconnected phrases 
which it is sometimes difficult to catch. She is like 
a person talking in sleep. Dr Hodgson and Pro- 
fessor Hyslop have collected as many of these 
broken sentences as they could, keeping them 
separately under a different heading from the 
record of the rest of the sitting proper. At the 
end, Mrs Piper often asks this odd question ) 
"Did you hear my head snap?" And after her 
head is supposed to have snapped she looks round 

176 



MRS PIPER 177 

her in apparent astonishment and alarm, and then 
all is over, she no longer remembers what she has 
said or written during the trance. 

We shall see that these scraps of phrase are less 
incoherent than they seem, and that it is worth 
while to collect them. Very often when numerous 
unsuccessful efforts have been made to recall a 
proper name during the sitting, Mrs Piper pro- 
nounces it when coming out of the trance ; when 
she is re-entering her body, the communicator or 
communicators repeat the name to her insistently, 
and make great efforts to cause her to remember 
and pronounce it as she comes out of the trance. 
I have already quoted an example of this. M. Paul 
Bourget asked the name of the town in which the 
artist he was communicating with had killed herself. 
The name did not come, but Mrs Piper pronounced 
it as she was leaving the trance — Venice. Mr Robert 
Hyslop's name was given in the same way the first 
time, but accompanied by very significant scraps of 
speech as follows. Mrs Piper first tried to pronounce 
the name, then she said Hyslop, and went on, — 

" I am he. 1 Tell him I am his father. I — Good- 
bye, sir. I shouldn't take him away that way. Oh, 
dear. Do you see the man with the cross 2 shut out 
everybody? Did you see the light? What made 
the man's hair all fall off?" 

Dr Hodgson asks, " What man ? " 

Mrs Piper. — "That elderly gentleman that was 
trying to tell me something, but it wouldn 't come." 

1 Proc. of S.P.R., vol. xvi. p. 322. 

2 That is to say, Imperator, who always signalises his presence by 
making a cross on the paper, or, with his hand, in the air. 

M 



178 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

At a first glance this passage seems mere incoher- 
ence, but all the portions of sentences have a very 
clear meaning when they are examined together with 
the events of the sitting. They are, as it seems, com- 
missions with which the medium is charged as she is 
returning into her organism, or they are observations 
made among themselves by the spirits present, which 
the medium automatically repeats, or they are the 
observations and questions of the medium herself. 
All that Mrs Piper says on coming out of the trance 
belongs to one of these three categories. 

In the passage quoted, the words, " I am he. Tell 
him that I am his father," are a commission with which 
the medium is charged by Mr Robert Hyslop. Mrs 
Piper takes leave of Robert Hyslop with the formula, 
" Good-bye, sir." The phrases which follow, " Oh, 
dear. I shouldn't take him away that way. Do you 
see the man with the cross shut out everybody ? " 
are the remarks of spirits repeated automatically, 
or Mrs Piper's own remarks on Imperator, who, 
seeing the light exhausted, imperiously sends off 
everybody, including Mr Robert Hyslop himself, in 
spite of his desire to remain with his son. Imperator 
must even have used some force, to justify the 
observation, " I should not take him away that way." 
The final phrases are always Mrs Piper's own ques- 
tions and remarks. When she says, " Did you see 
the light ? " she alludes without doubt to the light 
of the other world, invisible to us. The other sen- 
tences are clear enough, when we remember that 
Mr Robert Hyslop was entirely bald. There are 
utterances like these, only apparently incoherent 
on coming out of all the trances ; but they vary in 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 179 

length. The last words, if I am not mistaken, always 
come from Mrs Piper herself, which is logically to be 
expected, since she gradually loses the memory of 
the world she has just quitted, up to the definite 
moment of waking, marked by the so-called snap in 
her head. 

These speeches on coming out of trance constitute, 
in our eyes, one more argument against the hypothesis 
of telepathy and secondary personalities, because 
there is no trace of simulation. To suppose simula- 
tion would be to accord to telepathy too much skill 
in the arts of deceit. 

These speeches bring into the foreground the 
question : " What becomes of the medium's spirit 
during the trance, if there is a spirit ? " The controls 
say that it leaves the organism and remains in the 
company of the group of communicating spirits. 

"But then," it will be said, "if she lives for the 
time being in the other world, why does she not 
relate her impressions when she wakes ? " 

We must not forget that for spirits our life is a 
sleep, and that we are only conscious of what we 
acquire through the medium of our five senses. 
When the spirit is again plunged into the prison of 
the body, after having left it for a time, it goes to 
sleep once more and forgets all; it recommences 
living the fragmentary life which is all that the five 
senses permit. The complete absence of memory in 
the medium when awake is no more astonishing than 
the same phenomenon in a subject coming out of 
hypnosis, during which he may have talked, and 
even done much. 

Besides, during the short instants when Mrs Piper 



180 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

is as if suspended between two worlds, she still has 
a vague recollection of what she has just heard ; the 
fragments of sentences she utters bear sufficient 
witness to this. She rarely fails to shed a few tears, 
and to say, " I want to stop here, I don't want to go 
back to the dark world ! " Here is a characteristic 
passage, as an example. Mrs Piper, coming out of 
the trance, begins to weep and murmur, " I do not 
want to go back to the darkness . . . Oh, it is, it is, 
it must be the window . . . but I want to know . . . 
I want to know where they are all gone x ... It is 
funny ... I forgot that I was alive . . . Yes, Mr 
Hodgson, I forgot ... I was going to tell you some- 
thing, but I have forgotten what it was . . . You see, 
when my head snaps, I forget what I was going to 
say ... It must benight. Oh, dear ! I feel so weak 
... Is that my handkerchief?" 

On other occasions she uses an odd figure of speech. 
" You see Rector turns round a dark board and says 
that's your world — and he turns round the other side 
and that's light, and he says that's his world. I don't 
want to go back to the dark world." 

Another time she says, quite at the end, " Is that 
my body ? how it pricks ! " 

It appears that Imperator, before sending her 
back to the " dark world," prays for her, and she 
sometimes repeats fragments of the prayers auto- 
matically. 

" Is that a blessing ? Say it." 2 

" Father be and abide with thee for evermore." 

" Servus Dei — I don't know." 

1 The spirits in whose company she has been. 

2 Proc. of S.P.R.y vol. xvi. p. 396. 






FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 181 

" I have all these to look out for. I leave thee 
well." 

" Go and do the duties before thee." 

" Blessings on thy head." 

" The light shall cease." 

"Why do you say that ?" 

" Are you going ? Good-bye." 

" I want to go along the same path with you." 

" Hear the whistle ? " (This was an earthly whistle, 
which those present also heard.) 



CHAPTER XX 

Encouraging results obtained — The problem must be solved. 

And now, can there be a conclusion to this work ? 
It does not allow of any conclusion. The most I 
can do in terminating is to record certain facts. Dr 
Hodgson, Professor Hyslop and others, who, though 
unprejudiced, began these studies as sceptical as any- 
one, have ended, after long years of hesitation, by 
giving their adhesion to the spiritualist hypothesis. 
But, as they are careful to point out, they accept this 
hypothesis conditionally, and not definitely. New 
experiments and new facts may turn their minds in 
quite another direction. 

Should we follow them ? Should we each admit 
conditionally the spiritualist hypothesis ? Not at all ; 
it is not thus that knowledge is attained. Whoever 
believes that he has excellent reasons for preferring 
any other hypothesis should remain unshakable in 
his convictions till the time when new facts may 
oblige him to abandon them. Science does not ask 
that we should prefer this or the other explanation ; 
it only asks that we should study the facts unpre- 
judiced, that we should be sincere, and not shut our 
eyes childishly to the evidence. 

182 



MRS PIPER 183 

If a future life is to be, I will not say proved, but 
admitted by a majority, a great number of experi- 
menters, or, if you please, observers, working inde- 
pendently of one another in all quarters of the globe, 
must reach identical conclusions. Again, it must 
be possible for any intelligent man willing to make 
the effort, and retracing the path followed by the 
first observers, to arrive at the same conclusions. 
The magister dixit is out of date. Teachers in the 
present day must show their disciples the path of 
truth, and not try to impose upon them what they 
themselves regard as truth. Modern science knows 
no infallible Pope, speaking ex cathedra* 

Further, we must not confine ourselves to the study 
of one side of mediumship only. The phenomena 
produced in the presence of mediums are various. 
All the phenomena classified as " psychical " must 
be carefully considered and thoroughly investigated. 
The grain must be separated from the chaff; it must 
be decided which among these phenomena appear to 
be due to spirits, which, according to the evidence, 
are due to incarnated minds, and finally, which (if 
there are such) have only ordinary physical causes. 
The new workmen who are entering the field of 
science have before them a long task of clearing 
the ground, but the ground seems to be of un- 
exampled fertility ; with a very little goodwill we 
shall reap such a harvest as has never been seen. 

No doubt, though mediums able to produce certain 
second-rate phenomena are not rare, good mediums 
are not easy to discover ; they are less rare, however, 
than the bones of Anthropopithecus erectus. When a 
good medium is discovered it is not necessary to call 



1 84 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

a committee together and put the value he may have 
for science to the vote. If the "other world " exists, 
it appears that no " missing link " exists between it 
and our own. 

Thus the general conclusion to be drawn from the 
work described in this little book, and from the other 
work of the Society for Psychical Research, is that 
devotion to these studies is far from being fruitless. 
Even official science might turn in this direction, if 
only in order to defend the doctrines dear to it. It 
will come to that, without doubt, but will it be soon ? 
Humanity is but poor stuff, though the monists 
do not hesitate to hold it up to us as the highest 
expression in our corner of space of the conscious- 
ness of their great god Pan. The great majority of 
human units is composed of minds in first childhood, 
eager only for childish things. 

By slightly modifying Plato's allegory it is easy to 
arrive at an understanding of the state of humanity 
at the present time. Imagine very imperfect, very 
undeveloped beings, possessing, however, an infinity 
of latent potentialities ; imagine them born in a dark 
cavern where they swarm pell-mell, passing their 
time chiefly in devouring one another. Every 
moment this cavern is entered, and a certain number 
of these poor beings are taken out of it and carried 
into the light of day, that they may enjoy a higher 
life, and admire the beauties of nature. Those 
remaining in the cavern weep for their companions 
and think that they have for ever vanished. But in 
the vault of the cavern there are fissures through 
which a little light filters. A few inquisitive beings, 
a little more developed than their brothers, climb up 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 185 

to these fissures ; they look out, and believe that 
signs are made to them from outside. They say to 
themselves, " Those who are making signs to us are 
perhaps the companions who are constantly being 
carried off from amongst us ; in that case they 
cannot be dead ; they must be continuing to live 
up there." And they call to their brothers below, 
" Come and see ; it looks as if our companions who 
go up yonder every day are making signs to us. 
We are not sure ; but if we unite our efforts and 
intelligences perhaps we shall end by being certain." 
Do you suppose that the swarms on the ground of 
the cave will run ? They have quite other things to 
do. They do not stone the importunate seekers, but 
they look on them askance and heap annoyances 
upon them. But we will drop allegory ; and merely 
say how deplorable it is that psychical studies do not 
inspire more enthusiasm. 

The doctors at first declared that mediumship was 
a form of neurosis. Nothing is less certain ; I will 
even say that nothing is less probable. Educated 
people of independent social position when by 
chance they discover that they possess mediumistic 
gifts hide them carefully, instead of offering them 
spontaneously for study ; they do not wish to be 
supposed to be diseased; nobody likes to proclaim 
his defects in public. This is why well-known 
mediums are nearly all recruited from the lower 
classes and the poor ; they are obliged to make 
merchandise of their gifts; they are paid to produce 
phenomena, and, when these do not occur spontane- 
ously, they cheat. Mediums should be sought for 
in the class of educated people who are not obliged 



1 86 MRS PIPER AND THE SOCIETY 

to work for their daily bread. There are as many 
or more in this class as in any other if we would 
only look for them. What should such mediums 
fear? Do not Mile. Smith and Mrs Piper, when they 
allow competent persons to study their medium- 
ship, render more valuable services to society than 
do so many social encumbrances, so many flies on 
the wheel who deafen us with their buzzing ? Have 
they any reason to be ashamed ? 

Finally, in order to attain to any result in these 
studies, money is needed — why not say so? In- 
teresting subjects must be paid when they need 
payment, and competent investigators must be paid 
when they need a salary. If a thousandth part of 
the sum devoted in a year to the art of killing were 
devoted to the solution of this problem, before ten 
years were over we should have settled the question, 
and humanity could boast an unexampled victory. 

In America and all the Anglo-Saxon countries 
many persons, as noble as they are generous, give 
for science, for universal instruction, for founding 
universities and colleges. May they be blessed ! 
They make a noble use of their money. But it is 
regrettable that as much money as is needed can be 
found for the search after — let us say — the Anthro- 
popithecus erectus y and that it cannot be found for 
Psychical Research. 

If I am not mistaken, a prize has been offered to 
whoever can find the means of communicating with 
the planet Mars. If this communication were ever 
established, I do not see how humanity would benefit 
by it, beyond the satisfaction of its curiosity ; which 
is, however, a noble and legitimate curiosity. But 



FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 187 

how much more helpful and interesting it would be 
to communicate with the world beyond the grave, if 
such a world there be, the world whither we are all 
bound. Perhaps some time mankind will realise 
this fact. 



THE END 



EDINBURGH 

COLSTON AND COY. LIMITED 

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